


Of Heroes and Monsters

by thecuiy



Category: Naruto, RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Smart Uzumaki Naruto, Strong Uzumaki Naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-05-31 22:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecuiy/pseuds/thecuiy
Summary: It's been almost seven years since he first left Konoha for the outside world of Remnant. In that time, he's join and left a terrorist organization and become the youngest S-rank to grace the pages of the Bingo Book. You'd think there's nowhere to go but up from there. Too bad the apocalyptic monster trapped in his gut is arguably the least of his problems.





	1. Prologue: Of Uzumaki Naruto, Part I

**_This world is a world of heroes and monsters._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_The wind is howling._

_Snowflakes dance across a landscape of ash and ice. A jet black void fills the sky. Grey storm clouds rumble overhead. Snow and soot smother a forest of stone, the scent of faded embers clinging to charcoal and cinder._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_To most, the monsters are the Creatures of Grimm, terrible beings who seem to exist with no purpose other than to destroy. No one knows much about these creatures, neither where they come from nor what drives them to hunt man and his creations._ **

**_But we know one thing for sure._ **

**_These things are the enemy._ **

**_They are the encroaching darkness, seeking to drown this world in a tide of death and destruction._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_A bundle of rags flees through the thickets of long dead trees._

_Thin clouds of smoky white take to the air behind him. His frenzied sprint gouges a trail of tiny footsteps into the snow. Frigid air fills his lungs. With every desperate breath, a numbness burrows deeper and deeper into his chest._

_The cold fills him. A deathly chill settles in his stomach._

_Behind him, the dead forest trembles._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_Yet, where there is shadow, there must also be light._ **

**_The ‘brave’ Huntsmen and Huntresses of Remnant play this role, sacrificing life and limb in their never-ending crusade against the Creatures of Grimm._ **

**_Unlike the reclusive Shinobi, loyal first and foremost to their hidden villages, and unlike the mysterious Sages, secluded and fiercely devoted to their ancient traditions, these warriors of dust, of aura and of steel are the defenders of this world. Each wielding their own unique Semblance, they form the pillars of society, the shields against which the tides of darkness break._ **

**_They are the ‘good’ to the ‘evil’ of the Grimm._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0**

_Flakes of white fall from blackened branches. Frozen charcoal crumbles to dust._

_The land buckles in the wake of the shadow’s approach._

_He flees from the advancing tremors, fear pumping blood through already frozen veins. A hidden patch of ice catches his step. His foot skids but he manages to recover, shambling forward and never breaking his stride._

_The ground makes a sudden slope downward. Another step shakes the earth._

_This time he does trip._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_Every kid dreams of growing up to be one of them, of being the brave hero fighting the evil monsters, protecting the innocent and saving the day._ **

**_Even I did, once upon a time._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_He falls, tumbling, rolling through mounds of ice and snow and ash, at last coming to a stop at the base of the hill._

_Snow engulfs him in a sea of soft white. Invisible chains bind his limbs. Frozen still, the cold saps the last embers of warmth from his body. It bites through cloth, piercing his chest, freezing solid his still-beating heart._

_He can hear it, a whisper on the shrieking winds._

**Sleep** _, it says._ **Entrust your heart to me and sleep.**

**Sleep and forever dream pleasant dreams.**

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_Unfortunately, I found out pretty quickly I wasn’t good enough to be any kind of hero._ **

**_Any weapon in my hands was more of a threat to me than it was to any grimm._ **

**_The only thing I could do with dust was make it blow up in my face._ **

**_And by the end of my third year of combat training, I still hadn’t even figured out how to unlock my aura._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_The ground shakes. White and grey break as he claws his way back to the surface._

_Snow and soot and ash cling to his tattered cloak. The hood falls back to reveal a head of wild blond hair, bright like the rays of the morning sun._

_Three whisker-like scars mark both of his cheeks, his skin pale but not too pale, bright with the flush of exhaustion._

_Once the same warm blue as a midsummer’s sky, once bright with a child’s innocence, his gaze bites colder than ice, a mirrored reflection of the frozen wasteland surrounding him._

_The weight of his gaze and the scars on his face lend him a certain air of maturity. But the softness along his cheeks and jawline betrays his true age, his stature childish and his skin otherwise smooth and free of wrinkles._

_It is but a boy, a lone child, who finds himself lost in this dead land._

_The child crawls back to his feet. He pulls his cloak tighter around him, first stumbling and then running once more as a shadow eclipses the horizon._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_It wasn’t a surprise._ **

**_No real family, friends or skills or talent to speak of, I was the kind of person you’d only hear about because they got themselves killed trying to do something stupidly heroic._ **

**_As morbid as that is…_ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_There is no real reason for it. No noble desire or lofty ideals. Rather than call it iron will, childish stubbornness is a more apt description._

_Because in this forsaken place, even if there is no life, no warmth, no light, even if he is all that remains in this wasteland, buried in ash and smothered in snow, he refuses to vanish and disappear._

_He refuses to give up and fade away._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_Ah, I forgot to introduce myself!_ **

**_The name’s Uzumaki Naruto! Or Naruto Uzumaki, I guess, if you’re from the Kingdoms. It’s always a pain, having to remember to switch back and forth. Kind of like having two names._ **

**_Yeah… there are a couple other names I have back home and in the Kingdoms._ **

**_But those aren’t too pleasant. So I’ll keep them to myself for now._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_The tremors advance. At last it comes into view, a light at the end of the tunnel. An escape leading out of this forest of death._

_One last push; Gathering all of his strength, he breaks out from the tree line-!_

_And finds nothing._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_My motto has always been “Never give up and never back down!”_ **

**_That… it’s how I know, someday, I’ll break._ **

**_And whether I shatter to pieces in an instant or slowly grind away into dust, I know the day will surely come._ **

**_I just hope it isn’t too much of a hassle for whoever is left picking up the pieces._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_Dark waters dominate the horizon._

_Churning and trashing, a black sea extends for as far as the eye can see._

_He falls to his knees, watching in horror as a clump of snow plummets off the cliff, into the crashing waves below._

_The ground shakes one last time and a shadow falls over him._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_I’m no hero._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_Its presence appears without warning, descending on him, crushing him like an ant caught in a thunderstorm._

_He turns with the draw of a rusted wheel, as if the air has turned to syrup. He turns and looks up._

_And up._

_And up._

_And up._

_It towers above him, tall enough to dwarf the sky and blot out the horizon._

_Steam shrouds its form, ice melting and evaporating into mist on contact with the darkness, wisps of smoke wafting off jet-black fur._

_Jagged lines glow with crimson light, tribal marks joining and splitting off in a form vaguely reminiscent of flickering flames._

_Pools of molten fury leer at him from behind a mask darker than midnight. Nine tails whips and thrash in its wake, leveling the forest and crushing the earth beneath it._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_In another place, another time, I might have been. But the me here and now can’t be considered a hero by any means._ **

**_So I have no idea why anyone would care to read a story about me._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_In front of him looms a monster of monsters. A demon the likes of which can just as easily breathe him in as eat him. Behind him is the vast endlessness of the sea whose waters can swallow him just as easily as the monster before him._

_Death surrounds him and he faces a choice._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_But… well, let’s say for the sake of argument._ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_If he stays, the demon will kill him quickly and without any suffering. All he has to do is close his eyes and it will be over before he even knows it._

_But the sea… even if he somehow survives the fall, he still doesn’t know how to swim. There was never anyone to teach him. He will have to learn to swim or die a painful, pitiful death trying._

_A quick death, certain and painless. Or the slightest chance of survival, a gamble against insurmountable odds._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_If you were to write a story about me… someone like me in this world of heroes and monsters…_ **

**_…_ **

**-0-0-**

_An odd noise escapes his lips. Some strange sort of sound, caught between a scoff and a chuckle._

_As if it was ever even a choice._

_…_

**-0-0-**

**_Without a doubt, it’d definitely be a tragedy._ **

**-0-0-**

_A roar shakes the heavens. And the child plunges into the freezing abyss below._

_…_

_…_

_…_  


* * *

 

 _  
_ Of Heroes and Monsters

Chapter 1: Of Uzumaki Naruto

 

* * *

   
Thud, thud.

Thud, thud.

Weary blue eyes crack open to a faint, almost rhythmic thudding.

They blink slow and with the exhaustion of an interrupted rest. Shadows flash by, the unforgiving rays of the afternoon sun stabbing into his retinas like a salvo of tiny daggers, condemning him for daring to sleep at this hour.

Another blink. He rubs his cheeks. Wipes a bit of drool from his chin. The sting of more than a few restless nights turns his tired gaze into a squinted glare as he looks around, searching for the source of the noise, finding it to be the ceiling above him.

Thud, thud. Thud, thud. The other occupants of the train all fail to notice the sounds coming from above, from the roof of the train cart. Two columns of seats flank a rather spacious walkway, as though someone decided to stick a couple seats in a cargo train for whatever reason.

He scratches his head, digging his fingers into a greying-blond mop of wild spikes, a single stray hair sticking up off the top of his head, the faintest traces of gold still present among the white.

Hmm…? This is…

With that, he remembers. He remembers the reason why he is on a train in _Atlas_ of all places, the Kingdom most infamous for its intolerance of all things faunus and faunus-related.

It may be a bit of an exaggeration. But seeing as how the seat next to him is empty, as are most of the seats around him, the majority of the train’s occupants huddled at the front and back ends of the train as though trying to stay as far away as possible from the whisker-like markings on his cheeks…

Well, he can’t help but think there may be some truth to those rumors about Remnant’s most militarized Kingdom.

Then again, considering _why_ he’s here in Atlas to begin with, it’s not really fair to be judging them so harshly.

Leaning back, he slumps back into his seat. His gaze wonders about the train, searching for anything noteworthy.

A man in a suit taps at a PDA with clear annoyance.

A little girl draws on a napkin.

And a faunus hiding two, fluffy, dog ears beneath a hood glares at the suited man, whispering something into his jacket.

More thuds appear, like raindrops or some kind of gravel or debris falling on the roof of the train cart.

But raindrops don’t land in pairs. And they don’t cast shadows over the mountainside either.

The train jolts. He lets out a sigh. His eyes close.

“About time…”

It begins with the sound of someone kicking in the door.

“Nobody move!”

Next comes the screaming. The shouts. Footsteps stomp down the walkway. Men and women rush into the car, all with some sort of animal trait, be it ears or horns or a tail, faunus all wearing the same uniforms consisting of plain black clothes and grey body armor with a plated mask covering the top halves of their faces, the masks somewhat reminiscent of the shadowy beasts plaguing the lands of Remnant.

 Sort of. Maybe if you squint hard enough.

“Put your hands up!” a voice shouts in his ear. He peeks one eye open to find the business end of a shotgun inches from his face.

“Are you listening to me?!” the White Fang grunt yells, his voice cracking only a little. “I said put your hands up!”

He gives the faunus a tired blink, one eye not quite closing as fast as the other.

“So loud…” he moans in a sleepy half-drawl, rubbing his eyes. “Don’t you know it’s rude to be making so much noise when someone’s trying to sleep?”

The faunus gives him a confused look. “Sleep? Why’re you asleep at 3 in the afternoon?”

“Well,” he tilts his head in thought. “I’m _reeeally_ lazy.”

The faunus gaps. Another masked faunus, this one wielding a katana, comes to the aid of his comrade.

“Hey, what’s going on new guy? What’s the hold up?”

“This guy, he’s-“

Another tired blink. Sleepy blue eyes widen. “Wait a second! That boring outfit… those stupid-looking masks… you guys are the White Fang!”

Both White Fang members share a glance, finding themselves in agreement with the description, much to their chagrin.

Clad in an orange hoodie, black shorts and sandals, the fifteen-year old, Naruto Uzumaki, rises from his seat. Slouching a good foot shorter than both of his accosters, he glances around the train.

Four White Fang grunts stand at the front of the train, arguing amongst themselves. Two more stand guard at the back. Adding the two in front of him, that makes for a total of eight grunts, all for a single, unguarded, civilian transport.

Interesting. He returns his gaze to the White Fang grunt with the gun.

“Mmm… so I’m guessing you’re supposed to be a bear faunus,” Naruto says, noting the furry, round ears poking out from the hood of the faunus. Then, he looks towards the newcomer. “But what the hell are you supposed to be?”

“… That’s not important.”

“Heh, you’re something stupid like a donkey, aren’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter!” the donkey faunus shouts, indignation and shame coloring his cheeks. “Just put your hands up before I cut you!”

Naruto blinks. He perks a brow. “Are you guys… trying to mug me?”

“Are you really _just now_ noticing this?!”

“Yeah, I mean,” Naruto shrugs. “You guys _are_ kind of doing a pretty crappy job at it.”

The White Fang grunts still. They stand in stunned silence as both try and fail to comprehend that yes, the unarmed teenager they are trying to mug is indeed telling them that they are doing a bad job at mugging him.

“You’re both doing a couple things wrong,” Naruto says, his tone casual, almost lecturing. “First, those masks suck. They make you look like your only purpose is to make someone else look good when they kick your ass.”

“See, I told you these masks looked lame…” the first grunt says to the other.

“It’s part of the uniform!” the second grunt snaps. “Besides, they’re supposed to look like grimm masks!”

“Your bosses actually _want_ you guys to look like a bunch of disposable mooks?”

“Hey, who’re you calling a disposable mook?! That’s not what it’s supposed to mean! It’s supposed to symbolize how humanity treats us faunus like monsters so we put on these masks to look like the grimm since that’s how people treat us!”

Something flickers across Naruto’s face, something dark and ugly. He hides it with a quick smirk. “… You know there’s a video of some dude’s dog beating the crap out of a Beowolf.”

“Oh hey, I saw that video. It’s the one with the corgi, right?”

“There’s one with a corgi?”

“Shut up! Who cares what the masks look like!” the White Fang grunt says, brandishing his katana. “You wanna get cut, kid? Cause that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t start listening to us right now!”

“Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Neither of you are using your weapons right. For a katana, you want to put your hand here, like that.”

“Hey, what are you doing?!“ the grunt pulls his hand back and brandishes the katana. “You….! You…”

He pauses. The anger drains out of him like a deflated balloon and he looks to his sword arm. “Huh, it really is a lot better.”

Naruto resists the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he shoves his hands into his hoodie’s pockets, sighs and looks to the other grunt with a flat gaze.

“And _you_ forgot to turn the safety off,” he says in a dry tone.

Grunt #1 looks to his gun in confusion. He points it to the side and tries to fire. A click. The trigger catches. Grunt #2 slaps a hand against his mask.

This time Naruto does roll his eyes.

The incompetence of fodder and mooks the world over never fails to baffle him. Honestly, it’s like taking candy from a baby. The sheer scope of their uselessness is almost enough to make him feel guilty about doing this.

Almost.

“Here, I’ll get it for you,” Naruto says, putting his hand on the gun. “But honestly? The biggest mistake you guys made?”

A sharp crack, like fracturing ice, comes from beneath the whiskered boy’s palm. The grunt blinks as the gun in his hands falls to pieces, cut and sliced to pieces from the inside out.

“Trying to mug _me_.”

A fist slams into the grunt’s jaw.

The blow comes like thunder, heard and felt only after the fact, launching the grunt off his feet and into the seats on the other side of the train. Naruto turns to the second grunt. It takes a moment. The gears begin to turn and the grunt’s brain finally manages to solve the puzzle of why the form of his partner has been replaced by that of a smoking fist.

“Why you-!”

The response comes in a snarl and a flail of his katana. Naruto graces the oncoming blade with a dismissive glance, as if it is no more than a plastic toy swung by a small child.

He catches the blade between his fingers. The blade shatters, veins of frost coating the broken edges of the folded steel. A knee to the gut causes the grunt to double over. Naruto grabs the back of the faunus’s shirt, hurling him into the ceiling, the White Fang grunt bouncing off the top of the train car and hitting the floor with a dull thud.

The two White Fang grunts at the back aim their guns at the whiskered boy. Frigid blue eyes fall on them. Their fingers twitch, about to pull the trigger when-

_Death._

_A single knife, thrown with all the force of a bullet fired from a gun, piercing their aura, impaling their mask and burying deep into their brains-_

_A punch that causes their heart and lungs to burst like blood-filled balloons-_

_A kick shattering their spine, scrambling their intestines, puncturing their stomach-_

-their bodies freeze in abject fear at the gruesome images flooding their minds. The guns drop from their hands and the White Fang grunts fall limp to the floor, both foaming at the mouth.

Naruto blinks, staring at the two masked faunus. He scratches his cheek.

“Er… whoops?”

His hand snaps out behind him, grabbing the face of a grunt about to swing at him with a katana. Turning, he hurls the grunt into the window, the back of the faunus’s head cracking against the treated glass.

“Right, forgot you guys are just a bunch of idiots in Halloween masks,” Naruto says with a sleepy expression. “Sorry about that.”

Only three remain. Clustered together, the last of the still-conscious White Fang grip their katanas, wearily approaching the boy who just took out over half their squad in less than half a minute.

He raises a hand. A ghostly, ethereal flame flickers to life over his palm.

Three chains of golden light spout from the flame, wrapping around each of the grunts’ ankles.

Naruto throws his arm up. The chains follow his movements, slamming the grunts against the ceiling. He lets his arm fall. The grunts hit the floor. Repeating the motion a few times for good measure he dispels the chains, the aura constructs dispersing into motes of flittering aura.

The flame again sparks to life in his palm, this time taking the shape of a tri-pronged knife with a flat edge.

Knives and chains, knives and chains. It’s strange, the ways those two shapes always seem to come so naturally whenever he shapes his aura.

Shame he’s always sucked at aiming.

The dog-eared faunus trembles as frigid blue eyes fall on him. His cover blown, he goes for the receiver in his jacket, trying to contact the Lieutenant, trying to send a warning to his brothers and sisters in arms.

A flash of gold slices the head off the communications device, the tri-pronged knife going into and through the seat and the seat behind that and the seat behind that, vanishing back into aura before it comes to a stop.

“Tch, missed.”

The faunus pales.

“Oh, no I wasn’t going for the headshot,” Naruto is quick to explain. He pokes a finger into his palm. “Yeah, I kind of wanted it to do that thing where it stabs you through the palm and pin your hand to the seat.”

“THAT’S NOT MUCH BETTER!”

An unforgiving grip rips him from his seat, dragging him to the back of the train. Beneath the train, over the train tracks, looms a good kilometer drop to the forests below. One the white-haired boy gives him a _very_ good look at.

“So, I’m looking for a guy, kind of big, built like a bear, might actually be a bear faunus but I’m not too sure,” Naruto says as he dangles the plain-clothed, White Fang grunt over the rails.

He scratches his cheek. “Hmm? What was his name again? I’ve never been good with names…”

“Guh-ack! L-leme go!”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

The train turns a bend. The faunus almost screams as he feels the train’s momentum tugging at him, attempting to throw him into open air.

“I’ll do anything! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want, just pull me back!”

Naruto smiles.

He drops the White Fang grunt back onto the floor, allowing him a brief moment of rest. A moment he uses to try and crawl away. Before the faunus can even get back to his feet, a foot stomps on his back, pinning him in place.

“That’s something that’s always annoyed me about you guys,” Naruto says, crimson flashing across his eyes. “You know… other than the screwing with peaceful protests… and the stealing… and the killing… and the general… terrorism.”

He tilts his head. Perks a brow. And shrugs. “Anyway, point is, if you’re all so willing, so _eager_ , to kill other people for the sake of your ‘cause’, you should at least have the guts to not run away the moment someone turns the table on you.”

“But I guess that _is_ the reason they always send one of the real members to oversee your operations.”

“And that is who I’m looking for,” He crouches down, pressing his knee against the faunus’s back, grabbing a fistful of hair and yanking a dog ear up to his lips. “Now, little doggy, why don’t you tell me where your master is?”

“H-heh-“

A forced laugh comes from the faunus.

“You think you’re strong just because you beat up a couple of foot soldiers?” he jeers through the pain. “Well, you’re not! You’re nothing! Call us all the names you want, because once the Lieutenant takes control of this train-!”

“Oh, so he is here! Great!”

The White Fang grunt gapes when Naruto steps off him with a cheerful hop. The white-haired boy turns back to the faunus with a happy grin. “I was soooo~ worried! What if I got on the wrong train? Or what if you guys called off the job for some stupid thing or another? It really was a pain, tracking you guys down, waiting for an opportunity like this.”

“… What?”

“You see, your boss and your boss’s boss have pissed off a lot of people,” Naruto explains, crouching down to look the faunus in the eye. “A-LOT of people. People in high places. People with big money. People who know people who know people _like me_.”

“And those people? They couldn’t care less about rank and file like you. They know there’s plenty more where you come from. Buuut, they’re offering a pretty penny for anyone who can really hit you White Fang stooges where it _hurts_.”

The White Fang grunt blanches. He stares with disbelief at the boy maybe half his age. “Who… _What_ are you?”

Naruto sighs, as though disappointed.

“Oh yeah, I guess you wouldn’t recognize me without the mask. Honestly, nobody cares until I put on the stupid mask.”

He holds a hand over his face. As if it was always there, hidden behind some kind of illusion, a bone white mask phases into existence.

A mask identical to the masks of the shadowy beasts that plague the lands of Remnant. A mask styled in the image of a three-eyed fox.

He pushes up his mask to give the faunus another look at his face, an unhinged grin stretched across his whiskered cheeks.

“Y-y-y-y-yy-you’re-!”

**“How about it? Recognize me now?”**

The faunus hurls himself out the back of the train.

“Now that’s just overly dramatic…” Naruto deadpans, tossing the mask over the side of the rails. He turns back to the train. His eyes scan the passengers, searching for the puzzle’s second missing piece.

There. He points a finger at the well-dressed man.

“You, suit guy.”

“Suit guy? How rude! My name is-!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t bother,” Naruto interrupts with a wave of his hand, “No one cares about your name, anyway. But is there anything too dangerous hidden on this train? Like a cargo of dust or secret weapon hidden further up?”

“The only dangerous _thing_ on this train is _you_ ,” suit guy sneers with all of the feigned innocence of a business man trying to deflect the blame.

“Riiight,” Naruto rolls his eyes, “Am I going to have to give you the same treatment as Mr. Doggy?”

Suit guy sniffs at him. “Your tactless intimidation and hollow threats may work on animals like the faunus, but I assure you, no man of any self-worth would give in to such brutish tactics.”

Naruto perks a brow.

-a few moments later-

 _  
_ “AAAAAHHHHHHH-“

A scream echoes out the back of train.

“Sure holding someone over a ledge isn’t the most original idea ever but I don’t exactly have that much to work with here,” Naruto grumbles.

“I mean, I suck at genjutsu. And I’m not the biggest fan of cold-blooded torture either. You know how it goes. When all you’ve got is a nail, anything can be a hammer… or something like that.”

Another scream is the response. Naruto gives Suit Guy a dry stare.

“Alright, you have four seconds to start talking,” he says, giving the man’s leg a good wiggle to get his attention. “One…”

Naruto lifts his pinky. And the man squeals.

“It’s an armor!” he cries out. “It’s a prototype suit of armor, developed by the Schnee Dust Company!”

Naruto perks a brow. “An armor? Here I was under the impression you guys in the Kingdoms only cared for stabby things that transform into guns… where’d you get the idea for something like an armor?”

“It-,“ Suit Guy’s eyes dart side to side, as if searching for something. Like a scapegoat. “It was the Ruling Council of Atlas! The general ordered us to-“

Whatever he is about to say dies on his lips as an image pierces his mind, a vision of himself being torn apart by a herd of rabid grimm.

“Kay, you can stop talking now,” Naruto says, clamping down on the man’s leg, feeling the bone creek and strain. “Now, developing a superweapon during peacetime isn’t something I’d put past ol’ General Morningwood, but if he _was_ , you know he’d be flashing it all over the streets of Atlas, whipping it out in public so he could brag about how awesome it is.”

He pauses a moment to ponder if he should reconsider his wording. A shrug.

“But he isn’t. So that means you’re lying. I don’t like liars. Especially liars who try to hide behind a shield of civilians.”

“So,” frigid blues narrow, a coldness in his gaze that could cut through steel. “One more chance.”

“It…” a gulp. “It was designed to mimic the power of the Second Stage Jinchuuriki Cloak.”

That coldness drops a few more degrees. For a moment, he wonders if he should have taken his chances with the fall. The moment is short-lived, however as he is thrown back onto the train.

“Who knows?”

“O-only Jacques Schnee and the people hired to work on the project! I was only brought in to transport it!”

“Where.”

“I don’t know… there are supposed to be two exchanges after this next stop…”

The boy’s lips thin into a frown. His eyes narrow and drift away in thought, a burning crimson creeping across his iris. It appears for only an instant, like a dark flame burning away at the veneer of coldness, before that coldness reasserts itself and those frigid blues fall back on him.

“I’m destroying that armor, whether or not the White Fang has got their hands on it,” Naruto declares. He moves to return to the train car, only to pause and glance back at the man.

“You might want to _advise_ your boss to keep away from this whole ‘replicating a Jinchuuriki’s power’ business. Tell him to stick to his dust and his transforming guns. Because the easiest way to get a Jinchuuriki’s power is to make one. And people aren’t as easily fixed as machines once they break.”

With that, Naruto steps back into the train car, his mood soured and his mind awhirl.

An undercurrent of fear sweeps throughout the passengers with his return. Hushed whispers fill the air. Harsh stares follow his footsteps. They try their hardest to ignore his existence, as if pretending he isn’t there might actually make him go away.

How nostalgic.

Nowadays, he usually needs his mask to get that kind of a reaction. Not like when he was a child. Not like when those stares were still so cold and painful. Even now, it’d be a lie to say he can ignore them completely. There are some things a person can just never get used to. But there are more important things to worry about.

More than retrieving his bounty, dealing with that armor has top priority. While he has nothing to fear from someone like the White Fang Lieutenant obtaining such a weapon, there are others among the White Fang’s ranks who he _will_ have to worry about if they manage to get their hands on something like that.

Naruto muffles a sigh. Another day, another train wreck of a mission. Well, a metaphorical train wreck.

Hopefully it doesn’t become an actual train wreck.

A tug on his pants pulls him from his thoughts. Naruto looks down to find the little girl from earlier, standing atop the groaning body of one of the White Fang grunts.

“Hey, mister. Where’d the dog guy go?”

“He broke the rules and brought some bad things onto the train, so I made him go bye-bye.”

“Ooh…” the little girl nods in perfect understanding. “Who are you mister? Are you a huntsman?”

Naruto perks a brow. A wry grin makes its way across his cheeks and he pats her on the head.

“Not quite, girlie. Try aiming a bit more on the other side of the fence.”

The door closes behind him with a rusty squeak. He steps out of the train car, the mountain face speeding past him on one side and dusk eclipsing the sky on the other. Rushing winds tug at his hair. Wheels screech against the tracks. His gaze drifts from the horizon awash in crimson to the forest below, the color of flame beginning to creep into the sea of greenery.

“Summer’s coming to an end, huh…”

An explosion of smoke engulfs his entire form.

Orange melts into black and white. His shorts become a pair of black pants, taped off at the ankles. Black combat boots replace the lazy sandals. And his hoodie becomes a ragged, white haori over a black undershirt.

It is nothing too fancy, nothing particularly unique. A kind of lazy outfit one could probably throw together with some change to spare. By themselves, the clothes don’t speak to anything aside from their wearer being ready for a fight.

The mask appears in his hand with only a thought. It is the final piece to the puzzle. The symbol that gives the black and white meaning. A three-eyed mask styled in the image of a fox, the markings upon its face no different than those of the shadowy beasts plaguing Remnant.

As they should be, after all. Putting aside the differences in species and other superficial details, the only difference between those masks and this mask is that this mask isn’t attached to the face of some grimm.

Naruto fits the mask onto his face. Places a hand on the door to the next train car.

Light and darkness. Flame and shadow. He can see it in his mind’s eye, a nine petal spiral kept bound by nine chains.

It is like loosening a tap. Ever so slightly, the spiral begins to unravel. Golden embers escape out from behind the seal. Aura floods his body, the warmth spreading from his core, strength and vigor surging through his veins.

“Now then.” Blue eyes burn gold and look to the next train car. “Let’s try this again.”

The door shatters inward.

Four sets of eyes turn, a small squadron of masked faunus occupying the walkway, standing between him and the next car. All armed. All holding those arms like complete amateurs.

Wind swirls about his feet. Aura gathers in his legs.

_Burst._

He closes the distance in a single step, planting his foot into the chest of one of the White Fang grunts, his momentum launching the grunt over the remaining length of the walkway. A quick punch to the jaw downs a second grunt. A fist to the back of the head drops the third.

The fourth manages to finally get a glimpse of their attacker.

“E-EEEEEEEEEEE-!”

The moment his eyes see the three-eyed fox mask, he lets out a shriek, throwing down his weapon and fleeing as though the shadow of death itself were on his tail.

He gets to the end of the walkway before a hand grabs the back of his head and slams him face-first into the door. The grunt slumps to the floor and Naruto steps over his unconscious body, out this train car and into the next.

Each squad in each of the next three carts meet the same fate. The masked boy carves through the ranks of the White Fang on his way to the front of the train, where he finds a windowless passenger car labeled ‘VIP’.

Naruto takes a moment to inspect the ruined door.

A deep gouge runs along its hinges, the grooves and tears in the metal as though someone took a chainsaw to it.

“Yep, that guy’s probably here,” he concludes. A lazy kick sends the door crashing down.

Light pours into the train car. He steps through the doorway, eyes shifting side to side in the darkness.

“I heard the guy’s name was ‘Banesaw’, but that seems a bit too much like calling a duck a duck,” he mutters to himself. “Doesn’t exactly fit the Kingdom’s naming convention either…”

“Though, I guess I’m not exactly one to talk…”

Through heavy shadows, he makes out the shapes of the weapons lining the walls, the reinforced crates of dust stacked along the floor. A certain emblem is visible on each and every box, an emblem known to him and just about every other person in Remnant.

A white snowflake.

“The Schnee Dust Company…” his gaze drifts from the boxes to the various weaponry hanging from the walls, all of which he’s sure can turn into some sort of gun. “This is…”

He feels the bloodlust long before he hears the rev of the chainsaw. Naruto flips away as whirling teeth bite into the spot he was just standing in a shower of sparks.

 ** _“YOU!!!”_** a roar comes from the shadows.

The speaker emerges from the darkness, a giant easily head and shoulders above the masked boy. His entire body ripples with slabs of muscle. Trunk-like arms carry a chainsaw almost as tall, if not taller, than Naruto himself. With crashing steps, the White Fang Lieutenant emerges from the depths of the train car, beady, black eyes glaring from behind a custom, full-face, grimm mask.

“I’ve been waiting for this day, for a _long_ time, Uzumaki! Or should I say, the **White-Faced, Gold-Tailed, Demon Fox**!”

Naruto blinks, only seeing a hazy shadow in the darkness. His mask hides a questioning look.

“… Have we met before? Who are you?”

The Lieutenant twitches. Maybe from indignation. Maybe from mind-numbing rage. Or both.

“It was a mistake for Adam to think some _human_ could ever understand our cause,” the giant faunus growls. “Three years ago, you betrayed us and saved the Schnee! For three years, you’ve owed the White Fang a debt, and today it’s getting paid in blood!”

“I don’t know if ‘saved’ is really the word that should go there…”

The Lieutenant charges him. Naruto slips out of the way of a swing, the Lieutenant wielding the modified chainsaw like a greatsword. He dodges another slash from the chain-sword, swift steps keeping him out of the path of the whirling, iron teeth.

The chainsaw is little more than a faint blur of motion in the shadows. The echo of its engine bounces about the train car, the reverberations making tracking the weapon by sound all but impossible. Yet still, Naruto reacts to each of the Lieutenant’s swings without hesitation, keeping himself out of the way of the path of the whirling teeth.

It’s like reading from a book. The faunus’s thirst for blood telegraphs his every move. Naruto rolls under a grab, stabbing a golden knife into the back of the Lieutenant’s thigh. The wind-enhanced edge of aura slices through the faunus’s aura with ease, biting deep into flesh.

A crash. The Lieutenant falls to a knee. With a roar, he forces himself back to his feet, swinging the modified chainsaw with reckless abandonment.

 _‘His leg shouldn’t be able to hold any weight with a wound like that,’_ Naruto thinks, weaving through the onslaught of powerful but clumsy swings. _‘Is it just his aura… or maybe, a semblance…?’_

Every person has a semblance, a physical manifestation of their aura. From super speed to super strength to x-ray vision and controlling fire, each person’s semblance is said to be a reflection of some aspect of their personality, with a few notable exceptions. And while most prefer to simply incorporate this power into their fighting styles, there are some who prefer to keep their semblance secret to use it as a trump card and fewer still whose semblance would hinder them in a fight.

He, unfortunately, happens to belong to the later category. And while he is somewhat worried Lieutenant ‘Banesaw’ happens to belong to the second… even a semblance can’t make up for an overwhelming, overpowering, absolute difference in power.

Golden flames engulf his hand. He plants his feet. The chainsaw falls in an overhead swing to cleave him from shoulder to hip.

Naruto catches the swing.

The floor bends beneath his feet. The force sets his haori aflutter. The engine of the chainsaw screeches and sputters as the teeth try and fail to chew through the fiery aura engulfing his hand. For a moment, the Lieutenant stares in disbelief, the masked boy holding back his chain-blade with no visible effort.

“A debt?” the boy asks. The metal begins to bend and fold beneath his grip. “What are you talking about? I _did_ fulfill my contract.”

A sharp crack. The ‘blade’ of the modified chainsaw shatters, the belt sliced to shreds, the metal cut and splintered. The Lieutenant’s eyes widen. He discards the now-useless handle, throwing all of his weight behind a punch at the smaller fighter.

With the same ease that he caught the chain-blade, Naruto catches the punch. He lifts the Lieutenant off his feet, the masked boy swinging the giant faunus through the air, slamming him into the floor, swinging him overhead again and slamming him against the floor again, and again, and again, and again, imprinting the shape of the Lieutenant’s body into the floor before hurling him into a crate.

“I agreed to bring her to you,” Naruto explains, his tone almost as casual as his stride as he approaches the faunus. “Never said anything about what happens after that.”

The Lieutenant growls, throwing out another punch. It finds only empty air. A fist promptly buries itself into his solar plexus, doubling him over. A hand grabs the back of his neck. A knee smashes into his mask. The hand throws him upward, the ceiling stopping his flight and the floor catching his fall.

A groan escapes out from under his mask as the faunus pushes himself off the floor.

“Besides, I’m pretty sure the deal was for you to ‘hold her for ransom’ and not ‘execute her to make a statement,” Naruto says with a shrug. “Bit of a difference there. Just a tiny bit. As far as I’m concerned, you guys are the ones who never compensated _me_ for that bait and switch! Yeah! You fucks owe me money!”

He holds out a hand. “So you are right about one thing. Because, there _is_ a debt that’s going to get paid today. And it will be in blood. Any last words?”

“Lieutenant, it’s ready!”

A voice and a spray of bullets comes from the shadows. Naruto throws up his arm, channeling aura to his haori, the bullets bouncing off the reinforced cloth. A quick blast of wind throws the hidden White Fang grunt against the wall, knocking them unconscious, the momentary distraction having given the Lieutenant just enough time to scamper back into the shadows.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Naruto draws back his arm, wind and aura gathering into a condensed sphere of invisible blades. Before he can release them, his eyes dart to the crates. The rows of crates stacked on top of one another and lining the walls, each full of highly volatile, _very explosive_ dust.

He bites back a curse, crashing the sphere in his hand.

At the very least, he can stop this metaphorical train wreck of a mission from becoming an actual train wreck.

“Alright, you giant bastard…” he growls, stalking further into the shadows. “Better not make me chase your ass down again-“

The hum of electricity fills the train car.

A flash of light blinds him. His instincts scream at him to dodge. Naruto leaps to the side as a giant _something_ rushes past him, force and static tugging at his hair and clothes, the screech of lightning echoing in its wake.

Crackling luminescence pierces the darkness. A great bolt of lightning flies through the air. Naruto prepares to dodge, only for an annoying little voice in the back of his head to remind him just what that lightning is going to hit if he moves.

“Tch-!”

He plants his feet. Anchors himself with aura. Naruto draws back his arms, wind swirling in his palms. And channels all of his frustration into a battle cry as he thrusts his hands forward.

**“FUUUUUUU- _UU-_ UUU-!!!!”**

A sound that is definitely _not_ a voice crack is drowned out by the snap and screech of lightning as he catches the blast of electricity. The impact sets his haori aflutter, the heat singing the edges of his sleeves. Digging in his heels, Naruto begins to push back, his wind dispersing the concentrated lightning.

“ **-UUUUUUUUUUUUU-!!!!”**

Aura becomes wind. Wind becomes a blade, and that blade slices through the lightning, Naruto throwing his arms apart as he rips the bolt of lightning in two, the electricity dispersing into harmless sparks.

**“UUUCK-!”**

A giant blur of white surges forward.

Naruto’s eyes widen.

He just manages to leap back as a steel fist wreathed in lightning bursts from the shadows, slamming into his stomach with all the force of a pickup truck launched from a railgun. The blow turns his insides into mush, only aura and his own quick reactions stopping the lightning-enhanced punch from going straight through him, instead launching him off his feet, through the roof of the train car and into the air behind the speed train.

The tracks serve as his landing track, his spine none-too-gently digging a trench into and through the railway. All but embedded into a hole of his own making, Naruto groans. Smoke wafts from a hole in his shirt, the skin over his stomach bloodied and charred.

“… -uck.”

Pushing up his mask, he pulls himself free, rolls over and vomits blood and whatever is left of his lunch onto the tracks.

“Urk…” he wipes his lips and says through ragged breaths. “Feels like… stomach’s gone… probably ruptured… everything… ow...”

A shadow falls over him and descends with the crack of thunder. Naruto hurls himself out of the way as lightning and steel fall, blowing a hole through the train tracks. The shockwave throws him back, sending him tumbling across the train tracks.

He catches himself, skidding into a crouch. An electric blue light pierces the cloud of dirt and debris, the glow of a v-shaped visor. A smirk creeps across Naruto’s lips and he lowers his mask. “To think I was worried I’d have to chase you down again… but here you are, coming to me.”

Gold flares red. “How _considerate_.”

An armored titan emerges from the dust.

Sleek, polished steel covers it from head to toe. Blue lightning crackles about its entire form. The curves and edges lend to it an air of a knight’s armor. Glowing wires run from a pure white crystal set on its chest to the arms, the legs and to the ox-horned helmet where beady, black eyes glare at him through a v-shaped visor.

Metal fists clench. The crystal of dust glows brighter and brighter, screeching and humming as it pumps who knows how many millions of volts of electricity into the armor. A shroud of lightning engulfs the white knight, forming into… eight tentacles at its back.  

Naruto stands, his eyes narrowing. “Eight, huh…”

The White Fang Lieutenant surges forward with a new speed belying his giant size, the armored titan drawing back a fist pulsating with energy. Time slows. One second stretches into five as adrenaline floods his body, his mind racing a mile a minute.

One. He hears the words echo in the back of his mind, alongside the crackle of flames and the rattle of a chain about to give way.

 **_‘Kaimon_ ** _(Gate of Opening…’_

Two. The armored titan has already crossed half the distance between them, electricity propelling him forward, a giant bolt of white lightning and steel.

**_Release._ **

Three. The chain shatters with a sound like falling glass. The warmth flooding his body becomes a heat and that heat ignites a flame, searing strength into his flesh and bone, burning away at his wound.

Four. Snapping white blinds him. He can feel its approach. The static causing his hair to stand on end. Tendrils of electricity licking at his exposed skin. Aura floods his insides, pouring out into the world in a torrent of light and sound, red and yellow and orange erupting into the air, fire pushing back the lightning.

Five.

The metal fist falls, sheathed in a veil of lightning.

A flash of gold meets it, turning it away, a burst of wind blasting the lightning from the armor.

A heatless flame erupts around him. And Naruto can see the Lieutenant’s eyes widen beneath the visor as a tail of pure light emerges from behind him.

Another punch comes from the armored knight, this one from the other hand, this one with the same speed and cloak of lightning as the other. Again he intercepts with his tail, wind dispelling the cloak. The armored titan staggers back a step and Naruto draws back his arm, an invisible sphere of blades gathering into his palm.

He leaps forward. Thrusts out his hand. A deafening howl erupts from his palm, a storm of blades engulfing the train tracks, forcing the white knight backwards, stripping the lightning from its armor. His boot slams into the visor, two punches to the stomach doing all of nothing as the giant dust crystal at the armor’s chest lights up again, electricity sparking across the steel plating as the Lieutenant brings his arms down in an overhead smash.

A quick burst of wind throws him to the side. Thunder and steel blows another hole through the train tracks. Naruto flips, lands sideways on the mountain face, a layer of aura securing his boots to the rocks. Another burst of air sends him footing upward as the armored titan barrels into the cliff side, smashing a new cavern into the mountain face.

The bolt of white lightning rushes him again, crackling electricity surrounding the armored titan’s form. His tail again intercepts a punch too fast to dodge with enough force behind it to break his arm. Wind and lightning crash against one another, erupting into the sky. Naruto retreats further up the mountain. The Lieutenant follows with thundering speed. Yellow flame and white lightning race across the mountain side, summoning shockwaves and spraying pieces of rock and debris into the air each time they meet.

His world dissolves into a chorus of flashes and explosions.

The flash of lightning blinds him. The crack and boom of thunder deafen him. His eyes and ears fail him. Guesswork and pure instinct drive his movements as he trades blows with the armored faunus, tail against fists, aura against steel, wind against lightning, his own blows all but bouncing off of the lightning cloaked plating.

He should have just killed the giant bastard when he had the chance.

Now that stupid armor allows the faunus to punch harder than him and move faster than him, all the while protecting against his attacks.

It’s almost like he’s a kid again. A stupid, little kid, going up against people who he should have no business fighting, let alone beating. People who could breathe life into forest and spit out entire oceans, human-shaped monsters whose punches can crush mountains, whose kicks can part seas and whose semblances can be mistaken as natural disasters; the kinds of living legends who’ve even cleaved bolts of lightning in two, _real_ lightning, not the piddly, kiddy, dust-lightning fueling the White Fang Lieutenant’s armor.

He has fought against those kinds of people. He has survived against those kinds of people.

He has _killed_ those kinds of people.

Compared to them, this _fake,_ this pretender clad in a lie, is _nothing_.

Their battle reaches the top of the cliff side, pelting the train tracks below in gravel all the while. Wind howls. Thunder booms. Ducking under a punch, Naruto’s tail sharpens with wind, its form becoming thinner and sleeker. The wind-infused aura slashes the Lieutenant across the chest, carving a scar into the dust crystal. He flips over a grab, slicing a horn off the helmet.

His eyes widen as he feels something wrap around his ankle, pins and needles racing up his leg. Glancing downwards, he finds one of the tentacles of electricity, coiled around his boot.

The other seven limbs of lightning grab for him. His tail slices through them all, along with the eighth tail holding his leg.

An armored fist crashes into his chest. Bone breaks. Lightning sears through flesh. Warmth gushes up his throat, the blow launching him off his feet. He flips, manages to right himself mid-air only to land hard on his leg, a numbness burrowed deep into the limb.

His eyes go wide as the Lieutenant barrels into him, goring him through the chest.

“Gah-!”

The world flashes white and red. Pain radiates from the piece of electrified metal shoved between his ribs and through a lung. His tail whips around, slicing the second horn from the helmet. He brings down his good leg on the armored titan’s back, sending it crashing to the ground and catapulting him through the air.

He crash lands in a heap of limbs. A shaking hand grabs the length of steel stuck in his chest and rips it out, blood and steam rushing out from the wound.

“First, I got ‘mugged’…” Naruto groans, grabbing the hole in his side and forcing himself to his feet. “Then, I got shot at… and now electrocuted and stabbed… huh, is it Tuesday already?”

**“Hehehe… HAHAHAHAHA-!!!!”**

A warped laugh bellows out from the armored titan.

**“Yes! YES!! This speed! This strength! This _power_ is what will free the faunus from the yoke of you pathetic humans!”**

The white knight spreads its arms, electricity flickering from its fingertips.

**“How ironic! How very ironic that you humans would create the instrument of your own undoing!”**

“The hell are you talking about now…?” Naruto grunts.

The White Fang Lieutenant pauses to look at him. **“You don’t know… no, obviously you wouldn’t. What would a snot-nosed brat like you know about _them_?”**

“You’d be surprised…”

The mutter goes unheard as the Lieutenant continues his monologue. **“Consider this lesson your last rites. I’ll tell you what you humans have, for _generations_ , have tried so hard to forget! Go to the grave cursing your ancestors for the sins they tried so hard to hide!”**

“… Sins…?”

It takes a non-too-small amount of effort to keep the amusement out of his voice as he shifts, testing his weight on each leg.

**“Thousands of years ago, nine grimm were born on Soshima, the Island of the Elementals! These grimm weren’t your average grimm. They were stronger, faster, _smarter_ , than the rest of their brethren, each blessed with their own authority over grimm-kind. Even as the Warring Clans Era ended and the Elemental Nations rose, these grimm survived, waiting for the day to strike as one and wipe humanity off the face of Remnant.”**

The voice blaring through the speaker is arrogant and gloating, as if already assured of his victory. The Lieutenant continues to speak, not noticing as the blood leaking from Naruto’s wound slows to a stop, nor as the charred skin over his stomach begins to crumble and flake away.

**“These grimm were given the name _‘Bijuu’_ , a word meaning ‘ _Tailed Beasts’_ in the old language of the Elementals. Each Biju’s strength corresponded to the number of tails they bore, the One-Tail being the strongest and the Nine-Tails being the weakest.”**

It is all the masked boy can to do stop from breaking out in laughter. Clench his teeth, dig a finger into his wound and be thankful neither of them can see the other’s expression from behind their masks.

**“The humans lived in fear of these grimm, of the Biju. An entire peninsula of Soshima was turned to a desert by the One-Tail in a single night and the Nine-Tails was said to be able to level mountains and summon tornados with a single swipe of its tail.”**

**“Even with their dust, their semblances and weapons, there was no way for the humans to fight against such monsters. So they came up with a ritual, a vile, depraved and repulsive method of defeating these grimm.”**

The Lieutenant clenches his fists, lightning crackling along his armor.

**“They couldn’t fight them, they couldn’t kill them, so they sacrificed women and children to seal them away, forcing those who couldn’t fight to bear the burden of being a host to a grimm! Worse yet, these human sacrifices were not praised as heroes or saviors! They were given the name ‘ _Jinchuuriki’_ and treated worse than dogs, as if they were the very monsters they imprisoned!”**

“… Heh-“

The Lieutenant slams a gauntleted fist against his chest, the motion resonating like a clap of thunder.

**“This very armor was based off the Jinchuuriki of the Eight-Tails, the second weakest of the Bijuu! That its power, the power of the Eight-Tails would fall into my hands, the hands of a faunus, is further proof I was meant to use this to free these lands from the reign of thee humans! It is justice! It is-“**

Naruto bursts into laugher.

“Gahahahaha- ack, my wounds, it hurts! Hehe, hahahaha, I-I can’t stop! Hahahaha-!”

The Lieutenant stares, dumbfounded. The masked boy laughs long and hard, clutching his stomach. He laughs until he can laugh no more, reaching under his mask to wipe away a tear.

“Oh, man. I didn’t want to laugh, but hearing you spout off like you know anything is just too funny! And it’s disgusting. It’s so disgusting it makes me want to throw up and then laugh some more. It really is funny.”

**“Why you-!”**

“Talking like that, like you know anything about the Jinchuuriki when you’re nothing but a fake.”

The Lieutenant freezes as the air trembles.

“It’s so damn disgusting,” Naruto says, tossing away his haori. “It’s always disappointed me, the way you guys have changed over the years.”

“You White Fang assholes act like what you’re doing is for the betterment of all faunus. You act like victims when all you’re doing is taking advantage of the faunus’s hate and bitterness to drag them into _your_ war. You’ve hurt innocent people, burned everyone’s bridges and painted the hands of your entire race in red, all while having the _audacity_ to talk about justice. And that _really_ pisses me off.”

“I just came here to collect the bounty on your head…” he explains, standing straight up without any hint of exhaustion or tiredness. “… but not only did you go to the trouble of bringing that armor to me. You’ve also given me a pretty juicy nugget of info. So, in return, let me correct a few of your misconceptions.”

The burnt skin over his chest and stomach begin to flake off, revealing perfectly healthy skin underneath. He raises one finger.

“First, you got the order wrong when it comes to the strength of the Biju. Though, I can see why Kumo would want everyone else to think otherwise… Ichibi… the One-Tail is the weakest. The Eight and Nine Tails are in a realm of strength of their own. They could probably beat all of the other Biju with plenty of strength to spare.”

He raises a second finger.

“Second, the Biju weren’t sealed into non-combatants… they were sealed into woman and children because their bodies could adapt to the strain of housing a grimm the best…”

“Though, you are right about one thing,” Naruto chuckles. “Jinchuuriki do tend to become pariahs… seen as the very monsters they contain.”

Another finger extends. “Third. That armor doesn’t even come close to the Eight-Tailed Sacrifice’s power. Not even close. I’ve never fought him myself… but if the rumors I’ve heard are true, saying that armor ‘gives you the strength of the Eight-Tails’ is like comparing a paper airplane to a bullhead. Sure, they can both fly. But the similarities just about end there.”

“And fourth,” he raises his pinky. “You seem to be under the impression I only have one tail.”

It really is a shame. He’d love to see the expression on the Lieutenant’s face right about now.

**“I am the White-Faced, Gold-Tailed, Demon Fox.”**

Naruto lowers his hand and spreads his arms, his voice echoing with power. The hole in his side has vanished. His stomach and chest are healed. The air around him begins to ignite, motes of golden embers flittering into the sky.

**“Kagegoroshi. Tamamo. First of the Three Great Calamities, the Herald of Morning.”**

Behind him, his tail loses form, looking less like an actual tail and more like a length of living flame as a second tail emerges to join it. The golden flames in his eyes burn crimson, his pupils becoming vertical slits.

**“Wielder of the Authority of Hatred, he who bears the Dead Demon Consuming Seal.”**

Those embers become tongues of flame, gold and crimson swirling around the masked boy as a third tail emerges, strips of shadow manifesting in the center of each of the tails.

**“I am the Undying Vessel, the Jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox.”**

**“That’s… impossible!”** the armored titan takes a step back. **“That’s impossible! The Fourth Hokage killed the Nine-Tails almost sixteen years ago!”**

“Don’t you remember what you just told me?” Naruto asks with a chuckle, tearing off his shirt.

On his stomach, just above the navel, a menacing, crimson glow emanates from behind an ink spiral. Eight pillars enclose a central spiral, four seals forming the upper arc and four seals the lower arc.

“Now that introductions are out of the way… you seem pretty proud of that armor. Even if it is just a shitty fake.”

His skin pales. The ink on his stomach appears almost to bleed. Black oozes from the seal and reaches upward. Tendrils of darkness creep across the whites of his eyes. Crimson energy and liquid shadow swirl around him as his skin begins to peel and flake off, revealing a layer of pulsating scarlet.

“So, why don’t I give you a taste…”

The black crawls up his chest, over his throat and onto his face, staining the entirety of his mask a jet back. From the depths of the shadows, three eyes glow crimson, flames dance across the surface of the darkness.

A fourth tail emerges from behind him, this one forged of blood and shadow.

“… of just what th **e real thing can do.”**

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

He never had a chance.

Comparing a paper airplane to a bullhead. That was what the masked boy said. At the time, he didn’t believe him. At the time, he thought it was just hollow boasting.

It wasn’t.

The first strike shattered the armor.

The second tore the flesh from his bones.

The third reduced his lower body to a bloody smear somewhere higher up on the mountain.

…

Through the pain and tears and despair, he can see a form stalking towards him.

Its skin is of blood and darkness.

Its claws are blades and shadow.

The very presence of the creature dyes the world around it in crimson.

Three eyes glare at him from behind a mask darker than midnight. Four tails trail in its wake, swaying almost lazily in the air.

He tries to say something. To scream, cry, beg for his life.

The only sound to escape his mask is a weak gurgle.

A blooded claw rises. The claw that had torn through aura and steel plating like paper. Death’s shadow falls over him, and he cannot help but find it beautiful.

Because in this world… this shitty, messed up, fucked up world where people like him are treated like animals, where death and grimm loom around every corner, and where monsters like this boy and that woman exist…

_Just who the hell wants to live in a world like this?_

…

* * *

 

  
Of Heroes and Monsters

Chapter 2: Of Uzumaki Naruto, part 2

* * *

…

It is the standard fare as far as night clubs go. A bouncy and repetitive beat blasts in stereo from eight, giant speakers. Stage lights skip across the walls as patrons and partygoers take to the dance floor, chugging alcohol and spewing cheesy pick-up lines.

Behind the counter, Junior Xiong, a hulking bear of a man, wipes down a cup.

“Yo, Junior.”

He appears in a whirlwind of golden embers, a boy covered head to toe in bandages, a single blue eye peeking out from underneath the layering of dressings. His white hair is messy and uncombed, his t-shirt one or two sizes too big. The bandaged boy gives the man a wave, one hand shoved in the pocket of lazy sweatpants and his feet clad in comfy slippers.

Junior takes a moment to look over the boy very obviously a few years too young to be in his club.

“What’s with the bandages? Ain’t it a bit early to start dressing up for Halloween?”

“A bit. So, trick or treat and maybe I’ll think about not shoving my foot up your ass.”

“I take it your last excursion didn’t go quite as planned.” Junior says with a dry expression, placing the cup on a rack. The information broker’s words carry a ton of familiarity, as if he already knows how the boy will respond.

Said response consists of grabbing the remote and switching the channel on one of the flat screens behind the counter.

_“-when the White-Faced, Gold-Tailed, Demon Fox attacked a civilian transport train, coming into conflict with the White Fang. While there are no reported civilian casualties-“_

Junior perks a brow as the screen shows two pictures, one of a forest and a suspended train track with a mountain face looming over it.

The second picture is much the same. Minus a chunk of the train track. And the mountain.

“How’d that happen? I can’t imagine the White Fang being able to give you any real trouble.”

“Well, you see~ while I was out trick or treating, this weirdo named ‘Banesaw’ ambushed me and kept trying to sell me stuff but I didn’t want to buy anything. Then, he gave me some candy and it turns out the whole time he was just trying to get his medical license. So, I showed him how to do a cranial-ectomy, took the candy and left. Thought about staying in Atlas a bit but there was too much snow and lightning so here I am! Back in good ol’ Vale.”

It is a random spiel of words that would have anyone else wondering if the bandaged boy is just messing with them or if he had been hit on the head as a child. Repeatedly. Junior only purses his lips. Takes a moment to process the onslaught of words as the boy takes a seat at the counter.

“… So you planning on sharing any of that candy?”

Naruto chuckles, fiddling with some of the bandages on his arm. “If you want, I don’t mind trading…”

“How much?”

“Six for two.”

“One for one.”

“Five for both?”

“Three and I’ll give you a warning before the twins sneak up on you.”

The teenaged mercenary rolls his eyes(eye), non-too-subtly checking over his shoulder. “Please. I’m not that worried about running into them. They’re just always bugging me about my clothes, it’s weird… what happened to the good old days when you guys would shit your pants at the sight of me?”

“You mean before we knew there was a baby-faced, little brat behind that creepy mask? It’s no wonder the girls always want to pinch your cheeks.”

“This coming from the guy whose name is literally Junior.”

Junior places his hands on the counter. Leans against the bar as he gives the boy a scrutinizing look. “You never did cut the most imposing figure... though, the crazy eyes probably helped make up a lot in that regard.”

“I don’t have crazy eyes.”

“Now you don’t. Did before.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did. So, three and a head’s up?”

Naruto grumbles. “Fine.”

He perks a brow when Junior makes a face, at someone behind him. Pale arms reach over his shoulders and a pair of shapely breasts press against his back.

 _“Naruto,”_ a breathy voice purrs into his ear. “It’s been _so long_ since we’ve seen each other… you don’t call, you don’t write… I’m starting to think you’ve been avoiding me.”

“You’d be right,” the boy replies in a dry tone. He looks to Junior. “So… five?”

“Five.” Junior agrees with a sigh.

Naruto closes his eye to address the owner of the breasts. “I appreciate the assist, I really do, but you’re kind of heavy, so could you please get your boobs off my back?”

“Rude.”

The arms release him. He turns in his seat to face two girls, one dressed in red, one dressed in white, both with the same soft, white skin, the same green eyes and the same silken, black hair. However, the similarities end there.

One stand haughty and proud, the other shy and demure. The girl in white wears a set of bladed heels, a white flower hanging from her long, black hair. The girl in red wears a set of retracted claws, a pair of red and white feather decorating her shorter tresses.

Naruto looks to the white sister, Melanie Malachite.

“Miltia.”

He looks to the red sister, Miltiades Malachite.

“Melanie.”

Then, he ducks as a bladed heel flies over his head.

“Every time! _How_ do you manage to get it wrong, Every. Single. Time!?” Melanie huffs. “She’s Miltia! I’m Melanie!”

“Come on sis, you _know_ he’s doing it on purpose,” Miltiades says, taking the seat next to Naruto.

“Aw, you really think I would do that Melanie?”

Naruto ducks again as a claw slashes at his neck.

The white sister frowns, crossing her arms. “Would it kill you to get our names right for once?”

“In my defense, your names are hard to remember,” Naruto protests. “Back me up here, Junior.”

“Don’t drag me into this…”

Melanie gives Naruto a questioning look. “Like, how come you call Junior by his name instead of giving him a stupid nickname like everyone else?”

Naruto ponders for a moment. Less because he actually needs to think about it and more for effect. “I mean… his name’s already Junior. Honestly, that’s not much better than anything I could come up with.”

“I hate you so much.”

A slight giggle escapes the girl’s lips, one she hides with a huff and a smirk. “You know you’re kind of an asshole, right?”

“You two are the ones trying to beat up on an injured person.”

Miltia puts a hand on his arm, leaning against him. “Why do you look like a mummy, anyway?”

“Had to prove a point. Burned off the top layer of my skin though.”

Melanie wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”

“Was totally worth it.”

“You need to take care of yourself better,” Miltia says. She pokes his cheek. “Every time you come by, you’re always covered in bandages.”

A shrug. “I _do_ hunt people down and sixty-nine them for a living.”

Miltia blushes. Melanie lets out a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. She raises an amused brow. “You mean eighty-six?”

“Yeah that. Wait, what’d I say?”

“Never mind, there are more important things to talk about,” Miltia says with an expression of utmost seriousness.

“Like what?”

“Like _your clothes_?!” Melanie answers, tugging at his t-shirt.

“What about them?”

“Everything about them! You look like one of those background characters in a show where everyone can tell they’re a background character because the producers didn’t even bother to dress them up!”

“What are you talking about?” Naruto asks with a smile that causes his only visible eye to curve into an upside down ‘u’.

“I’d say I’m ‘dressed up’ from head to toe!”

He ducks as both a claw and a bladed heel pass over his head. Popping back up, he leans onto the counter, a satisfied smile hidden under his bandages. “Besides, I go through like three shirts a week. No point in buying anything expensive if it’s just going to get cut/burned/torn/exploded to ribbons in like a day.”

Miltia perks up. “Why don’t you just learn the shielding technique we use here in the Kingdoms? Melanie and I could totally teach you.”

“Nah, wouldn’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Reasons.”

“Reasons?” Melanie asks, crossing her arms. “What reasons?”

“Reasons more important than looking good while I’m fighting,” Naruto replies in a dry tone.

From the looks on their faces, one would think he had just blasphemed against their religion.

“P-plus, I’ve already got my healing factor so I don’t need to bother with anything like that,” he tries to explain. “Reinforcement is good enough for me...”

No good. He can see it in their eyes, both sisters preparing to launch into what is surely to be an hour-long discourse on the intricacies and importance of one’s fashion in battle. There is only one way for him to escape. A single route to not being serenaded in a hundred and one reasons why slippers are not considered appropriate footwear for anywhere outside the house.

“I-I mean look at Junior! He basically wears the exact same thing all his henchmen do minus the jacket!”

With no shame whatsoever, Naruto throws his business partner under the bus.

“Why you little-!”

There is a moment as the red and white twins look to their boss, their eyes cold. Merciless. Judging. As one, they pass their verdict.

“”Junior is not an impressive man.””

“I sign your paychecks.”

“”Whatever.””

Naruto chuckles to himself with a smirk under his bandages.

“Alright you two, clear out.” Junior scowls. “The brat and I have business to attend to. You both can flirt with him some other time.”

They both roll their eyes, almost in perfect synch. Miltia hops off the barstool. Turns to Naruto with a hint of worry in her expression. “Make sure to get some rest. Maybe come by and visit us sometime when it’s not just to see Junior?”

“Long as you don’t mind me being dressed like this.”

“Yeah, you annoying idiot,” Melanie says, kicking his leg with the non-bladed part of her shoe. “ _Maybe_ I can let it slide if you decide you want to keep dressing like a potato, but if you go and die before getting our names right at least once, I will like, _never_ forgive you.”

“Hai hai~, bye Melanie, Miltia,” he waves them goodbye, making sure to address each twin by the other’s name.

“”Jerk.””

Under the counter, hidden by a trick door and behind a multitude of locks and bolts, the two of them enter a musty box of a room illuminated by a single, hanging, light fixture. Coffin-sized metal drawers line the walls. The smell of rotting flesh and dried blood hang in the air.

“Geez, Junior. You ever clean this place?”

“I tried. The smell doesn’t come out.”

One of the metal doors open with a clang. The steel bed rattles as Junior pulls it out. Naruto fishes a roll of paper out of his pocket.

“Might want to look away,” he suggests, unfurling the scroll over the bed.

On the paper is an intricate seal, shapes and letters and symbols scribbled onto its surface in a reddish-black ink. A flicker of his aura causes the ink to glow a soft yellow. A small explosion of smoke releases its contents.

It falls with a wet splat.

“Oh- fucking hell! What did you do to him?!”

“I have the mask if you need more proof.”

“No…” Junior pushes the steel bed back into the wall. Resists the urge to gag as he slams the door shut. “I know you well enough by now… if you say it’s him, it’s him. What else do you halve for me?”

Junior hands Naruto a suitcase. Naruto fishes another roll of paper out from his pocket.

“The SDC are developing weapons under the table,” he explains, holding out his arm. “Whole reason ‘this’ happened was because the White Fang Lieutenant got his hands on one of their super-prototypes.”

“The Schnee… they’re making weapons now?”

“Not only that…” he tosses the scroll to the information broker. “I think I know who commissioned it. Kumogakure. It was an armor with a rather… unique design. I can’t imagine that sort of thing coming out of anywhere but the Hidden Cloud.”

“You have it with you?”

“Course not. Turned it into scrap metal. I kept a few pieces of it though.”

Naruto holds out his hand. Flicks his fingers. A shard of pure white dust materializes in his hand, the crystal almost appearing to glow in the dimly lit room.

“I doubt this thing came from the Schnee dust mines,” he says, turning it over. “It’s too pure. Lightning dust like this doesn’t occur naturally in the Kingdoms.”

“Could be imported. Shipped over from the Land of Lightning and refined in the SDC factories.”

“Probably was. But the whole thing’s about the size of your head. I doubt that much dust ends up in someone’s hands without some backroom trading going on.”

Junior takes the shard. “It’d fetch a pretty penny on the black market, that’s for sure...”

“Think you can find me a buyer?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Junior says, tucking the shard into his pocket. A heavy sigh. “So… the SDC are developing weapons. That’s one… hell of a one to start off on.”

“Something wrong?”

He shakes his head. Another sigh. Junior looks up, his eyes focused on something far beyond that metal wall. “Last great war was only eighteen years ago and here we are, already on the brink of another…”

For a moment, Naruto says nothing. He shifts and looks to the side. “I mean, isn’t that a good thing? War just means more work for us in the underground, right?”

Junior balls a hand into a fist, knocking it against one of the metal doors with a sharp rattle. Less out of anger and more just to vent.

“Not when there’s no one left to work for... How much do you know about the previous great wars?”

“Uh… that… there were… three of them?”

There is a moment as Junior wonders if the boy is asking him or telling him. Deciding that it is more than likely the former instead of the later, he sighs and shakes his head. “Never mind. This… really isn’t the time or the place to talk about that sort of thing. You said there was something else, right?”

“Nothing as concrete as the first, but yeah I’ve got another. Less concrete than the others. Does the word ‘Biju’ mean anything to you?”

Junior rolls the word around his mouth. Perks a brow. “’Tailed Beast’… no, what’s that?”

“Didn’t think so… ah~…” Naruto tilts his head back and sighs. Ponders how to condense a giant, long-ass monologue into less than twenty words. A shrug. “Well, let’s avoid any expositions for now. Besides, you can probably connect the dots better than me.”

“I think someone’s pulling the strings behind the White Fang. Could be Kumo. Might be someone else. I don’t know.”

Junior takes a moment to process the bandaged boy’s words.

“You think this ‘someone’ is the one who caused the White Fang’s change in leadership five years ago?”

“I don’t know about that… but I do think they’re behind the White Fang’s recent _activities_. I noticed something weird while I was tracking down the Lieutenant. It’s changed. Over the past few months, their movements have become distinctly more militaristic. Right now, they’re raiding dust transports, weapons supplies, munitions warehouses with almost five or six times the frequency. And that’s on top of their usual shtick. I’m guessing to keep people from noticing how they’re hoarding weapons and dust.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s someone giving them orders from behind a curtain. They could just be planning a large scale operation.”

Naruto shakes his head. “In a fight, you don’t go all in against a stronger opponent unless you think you can finish it. The moment they establish themselves as a real threat, the Kingdoms will crush them without hesitation. I’m sure the only reason the Councils haven’t given the go-ahead-”

“-is because if they did, it’d make the White Fang martyrs while embarrassing themselves on the international stage,” Junior finishes for him.

Naruto nods.

The man strokes his beard, pacing about the room. “It’d be in the White Fang’s best interest to lay low and just keep doing what they’ve been doing. Anymore and even other faunus will begin to denounce them. So the only reason they would change tactics-“

“-is because they think they actually have a shot at crippling one of the Kingdoms.”

Junior stops. He furrows his brow, sinking deep into thought. “They couldn’t do it alone. And you think the Hidden Cloud is behind them?”

“That’d be my first guess.”

“Even though you said they’re already doing business with the Schnee?”

“They are shinobi, after all. Backstabbing really shouldn’t be a surprise. Playing both sides is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from them.”

“You’re not wrong, but…” Junior shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s the Great Village Hidden in the Clouds. I think our mysterious benefactor is someone else entirely.”

“Oh, why’s that?”

Junior motions towards the door. They leave the room, returning to the stairs leading back up to the bar. Instead of up, they go down, descending into an ice box for storing drinks.

“There’s an old saying anyone who was alive for the Third Great War would know. ‘The Fifth Great War won’t be between the Great Villages and the Kingdoms or humans and faunus. It’ll be aliens versus the grimm’. Because there won’t be any humans left to fight in it.”

Junior takes a bottle from the shelf. “Here, hold this.”

“Would a Fourth Great War really be that bad?” Naruto asks, taking the bottle in his other hand.

“A lot of people think of the Third Great War as just picking back up where the Second left off. The War to End All Wars, they called it. Didn’t live through it myself, but apparently the only reason the fighting stopped is because humanity was on the brink of being overrun by the grimm. And people thought a Third Great War would push it over that brink.”

“Humanity’s worst enemy has always been itself…” the boy mutters to himself, making his way over to a table. He puts the bottle and suitcase on the top, digging a roll of paper and a bottle of ink out of his pocket.

Junior looks at the paper and ink with a worried grimace. “You really got to do that here?”

A shrug. “If you want to be conspicuous. It’d be troublesome for you if the wrong person saw me coming out from behind the bar with a suitcase full of money, wouldn’t it?”

The man grunts, turning his attention back to the labels on the bottles. “Where’d you learn that witchcraft anyway?”

“Hm~, let’s see. When I was younger and not quite as badass, there was this creepy, old toad who kidnapped me and tried to infect me with his pervy-ness, but then I transformed into a girl and seduced him into teaching me his pervy arts. Then, after I learned everything I learned everything I wanted to know, along with some things I’d rather have not, I kicked his ass to the curb and ran away.”

“There are so many things wrong with that story I’m not even going to try,” Junior deadpans, taking another bottle from a shelf. He perks a brow. “What were those things you learned that you’d ‘rather have not’?”

“Oh just…” Naruto glances away.  He scratches at his bandages. Unbeknownst to him, a red shadow flickers over his eye. “… Stuff.”

The word is said almost less as an answer and more as a sigh. For a moment, the bandaged-over boy says nothing and does nothing, his gaze fixed pointedly on a nondescript corner of the room.

Junior looks to his younger companion.

“Stuff?”

In an instant, the shadow vanishes. “Yeah. Stuff.”

“What kind of stuff.”

“Er, you know… pervy stuff,” Naruto twirls an ink brush in his hand. “Yeah. Like, for one, I can see under combat skirts.”

That earns a furrowed brow from the information broker. “What. How? They’re literally designed to prevent up-skirt shots.”

“To be honest, I don’t really know how it works either,” he shrugs. “Apparently the latest in anti-up-skirt tech is no match for pervy ninja magic. However that works.”

Junior pauses a moment to consider the boy’s words.

“Does what mean whenever Melanie lifts her leg to try and kick you…?”

“Yup,” Naruto confirms the man’s suspicions in a casual tone as his brush dances over the paper. Slowly but surely an intricate array of shapes and symbols takes form on the parchment.  “It’s surprising. With how much those two are always nagging me about my clothes, you’d think they’d both be the type to dress up from head to toe, but it’s surprisingly plain under there.”

“Perverted brat.”

“Oi. I deny that statement. Both parts of it.”

The specially treated ink dries almost instantly. Placing the second bottle onto the table, Junior looks over the paper and wrinkles his nose. “Is that blood?”

“Mixed with ink, yeah. Helps it synch with my aura better.” The brush vanishes with only a flick of his wrist. Naruto tilts his head, looking over the seal. “Hm. Hope I made this stroke right.”

“And what happens if you didn’t?”

He touches a finger to the ink. “Bunch of things could happen. Could be a dud, could summon some freaky-ass outer god from another dimension, could explode. Who knows? Was really annoying the last time that happened.”

“Wait, what was that second one-“

“One way to find out!”

The seal flashes to life. A golden light fills the room. It makes a hum like a hundred buzzling flies before the glow recedes and the seal falls silent.

Naruto looks to the man huddled in the corner.

“You know, it’s actually impossible for a seal to malfunction that catastrophically. That was a joke.”

“Fuck off…” Junior grumbles, slowly rising and making sure to keep his distance from the scroll. “That can’t actually happen, right?”

“It exploding or it summoning a god from another dimension?”

“Yes! Both! Either or!

“… So what were you saying about the Great Wars earlier? If people thought a Third War would ‘push it over that brink’, how come we aren’t just, like, up to our eyes in grimm?”

“Don’t change the subject! Can you actually do that shit?!”

“Relaaax~,” Naruto waves his hand, putting the suitcase atop the piece of paper. With a puff of smoke, it disappears without a trace. “Sure seals can be used to make paper bombs but someone’s only summoned a god, like… twice before. It was the same god anyway, no big deal.”

Junior brings a hand to his head, tries to rub away a growing migraine. He fails. Taking a half-empty bottle from the shelf, he pops off the cap and downs the rest of the bottle, attempting to drown the headache before it gets worse.

“You know I’m a normal person, right?” he asks, tossing the empty bottle into a bin and grabbing another. “Like, I can’t blow away a mountain or shoot lasers from my eyes. Summoning a _god_ is kind of a really big deal to people like me.”

“Hey, I can’t shoot lasers from my eyes either… can’t all be freakin Uchiha… anyway, what were you saying about the Third Great War? Why didn’t the grimm overrun everyone?”

“Because of the Fourth Hokage.”

Naruto starts to roll the paper back up. He pauses upon hearing the answer to his own question. A moment passes before he finishes rolling up the paper and shoves it into his pocket, taking a bottle from the table. “Minato Namikaze. The Yellow Flash. Hero of the Third Great War.”

“You know about him?”

“You could say that. So what about him? I’m guessing there’s a reason they call him the Hero of the Third Great War.”

Junior nods as they return to the stairs going back up to the bar. “His team and a team of huntsmen from Vale are largely credited with bringing an end to the Third War. Mainly him. If you ever looked up the word ‘hero’, his face is probably one of the first things you’d see. That’s how much people praised him for his efforts in bringing peace back to Remnant.”

A sour chuckle comes from behind him. Junior turns to find Naruto stopped with a hand shoved in his pocket, his head bowed and his only visible eye closed.

“And let me guess. Our ‘great hero’ died but left his hopes and dreams for a better future in everyone’s hands… and they did jack shit with it. Or worse, they went ahead and did the _exact opposite_ of what he thought they would.”

It is obvious enough from the tone of his voice alone. One eye is closed and the other hidden beneath bandages, but Junior is sure that at this very moment, both the boy’s pupils are wreathed in a burning, spiteful crimson.

“… That’s the gist of it,” Junior nods, looking to the younger male with a somewhat concerned look. It’s been a while since the last time he saw this side of the usually carefree and flippant boy’s personality peek out. “The Fourth brought an end to the fighting but died before people could really start to reconcile. By the end of that year, any sort of restoration efforts had slowed to a stop. Past grudges, old wounds that never healed. If anything, these past fifteen years they’ve just festered.”

“Whelp, go figure!” Naruto lifts his head with a shrug, stepping past him with his eye still kept in a squint. “People are shit. What else is new? So we’re on the verge of a Fourth Great War. Don’t see how that rules out Kumo as being behind the White Fang’s recent changes.”

“Because the Hidden Cloud was one of the first nations to answer when the Fourth called for peace. They may be one of the more power-hungry of the Great Shinobi Villages, but they aren’t warmongers. I doubt they would be the ones to want to break the peace that they were so eager to sign off on.”

“Then, who do you think it is?”

“… A couple weeks ago, there was a woman looking for you.”

Naruto stops before the exit. Opens an eye and perks a brow, the color of his iris a cold and ashen blue. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

“You said it was a fairly recent change, right?” Junior asks. “If I’m remembering right, her exact words were… ‘I finally have my army, I have my pawns. I don’t need any more foot soldiers. What I’m looking for is an ace’.”

“Hm… she hot?”

“… What.”

“Is she hot? You know, did you drool over her boobs the whole time? Give me a number here, one to ten.”

Junior gives the teenaged boy a flat stare. “Really? That’s your first question. Not, ‘who is she’ or ‘why is she doing this’ or even ‘what did you tell her’ or ‘how could she do such a thing’. Just, ‘she hot’?”

A shrug. Naruto tilts his head, digging a finger into his ear. “I’d say, off the top of my head, I can think of… six things I care more about than someone trying to destroy the civilized world as we know it. I wonder if it’s a crazy, hot chick. Those are things five and six, by the way. If it’s a crazy chick and if she’s hot.”

“You know you’re a bit of a sociopath, right?”

“I like to think I’m relatively well adjusted, all things considered. Now, how hot we talking here? Five? Six?”

“… I’d say a solid eight.”

They exit out from the door behind the counter. Naruto follows behind Junior, putting his bottle on a nearby rack. Their return draws no attention beyond a small measure of curiosity about the bandages wrapping him head to toe, and even that lasts for only a brief glance.

“Well, if you feel like looking into it, she left a contact.” Junior motions towards a person in the crowd. A man in a bowler cap with windswept, orange hair and way, _way_ , too much eyeliner.

“That guy has orange hair… it’s like a pumpkin...”

“So…” the information broker grabs a cup, his eyes curious and his tone somewhat hesitant. “Minato Namikaze? That’s a surprise. I’d figure you would have butchered his name and called him the ‘Yellow Flasher’ or something like that.”

“… Damn, that would’ve been good,” Naruto grumbles. He fiddles with the bandages around his cheeks. “I mean, if you guys know about him even here in the Kingdoms, of course everyone in Soshima would know about him. I doubt there’s anyone without at least some idea of his story… even if it doesn’t have the happiest ending.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Junior scoffs, pouring himself a drink. “Losing his wife and their unborn child all in one night? It’s no wonder he gave his life to at least make sure his home stayed safe.”

“Yeah…” the white-haired boy’s gaze goes unfocused. His hand comes to rest on his stomach. Something between a scoff and a laugh slips out from under his bandages, and he says in a voice almost too quiet to hear. “Kid was lucky…”

“What?”

“Hm?” his hand flinches away from his stomach, hovers around his side for a moment as though not sure what it is supposed to be doing before it decides to come up and scratch his cheek. “Oh, I was just thinking. I wonder what his kid’s name was. Considering the rumors I’ve heard about the Fourth’s naming sense…”

“Oh yeah,” Junior chuckles. “You ever hear what he named his semblance?”

“Pft, who hasn’t heard of ‘Avatar: Howling, Thundering, Tempest, War God of Valor’.”

“Is that the whole name? Heh, it might have had a stupid name but it really was the kind of thing you’d only see once in a generation. Kind of wish I got the chance to see it when he was alive. I heard the thing was as big as a mountain.”

“A small mountain,” the bandaged boy corrects. A twinkle enters his eye and childish excitement begins to creep into his voice. “The thing was still suuuper powerful, though! A lot of people think it’s a creation or a summoning-type, but it was actually a projection-type, you know? It was one of the few projection semblances to ever reach EX-class.”

“I have no idea what any of those words you just said mean,” Junior shakes his head with a smile. “Gotta say, I’ll never understand the fascination you have for semblances. What, making an explosive with some paper and ink is no big deal but some random power everyone’s born with is?”

“It _is_ a big deal! A semblance is a reflection of who you are, a piece of you as a person. And everyone has one! Sure, flying brick powers are _kind of_ boring, but there are tons of cool and interesting semblances out there!”

“Flying brick?”

“You know, like a flying brick,” Naruto counts off on his fingers. “Super strength, super speed, super toughness, flying. That kind of thing.”

Junior regards the boy with an amused smirk.  “Isn’t that basically you?”

“Yeah, but I do all of that stuff without a semblance!” he boasts, puffing out his chest. He hops onto the bar, sitting cross-legged on the counter with his arms in his lap. “Like, a while ago I fought this lady who could control things with hers? Just think like telekinesis ramped up to eleven. Man, that thing was sooo~ strong! It was really cool to watch too, the way she could gather up random pieces of rocks on the ground into spears or just summon a giant storm of dust and debris to dump on me with only a wave of her arm. I think she’s a huntress or something. It’s just too bad. With a semblance like that she probably has a giant stick up her ass.”

“A huntress, huh… You ever think of becoming one of them? A huntsman, I mean.”

“A huntsman?” Naruto asks. His entire upper body tilts to the side. “Can’t say that I have. Why?”

“I was just thinking,” Junior says, swirling his drink. “You’re always complaining about finding work, no doubt because you always piss off your clients the second you open your mouth.”

Naruto opens his mouth to retort. He pauses. Shrugs and motions for Junior to continue.

“So why not just get a stable job? Go to somewhere like, say, Beacon Academy. Become a certified huntsman. It’s not like you’re not strong enough.”

“Well, there are lots of reasons why I can’t just do that.” The bandaged boy roll-flips upwards and back, spinning through the air only once before landing in a seated position atop one of the bar stools. He leans onto the bar. Begins to count on his fingers. “I just don’t think I’d fit in, I hear they don’t serve ramen at those places and honestly, I think hunters are kind of lame compared to shinobi and –oh yeah!”

“I’m an _S-rank_ criminal in the Bingo Book with a kill order in two Kingdoms, three of the Five Great Villages and who knows how many of the lesser villages. I’d probably get a warmer reception from _the grimm_.”

Junior perks a brow. “You _do_ know that fake identities are a thing, don’t you? And don’t you ninja-types have some trick to literally transform yourselves to look like anything you want?”

“Screw that. Don’t wanna.”

“You can be really childish sometimes, you know that?”

“Hey, even someone like me gets to be childish from time to time.” Naruto hops to his feet. Shoves his hands into his pockets. “Besides, all of that stuff is just superficial. I may as well put some makeup on to hide my whiskers and dye my hair for all the good it’d do me. The second I let my aura out or had to fight seriously, the instructors would figure out who I am.”

“Sort of Ozpin, the Great and Terrible himself, descending from Beacon on high to invite to attend his school, the only way I’m getting into one of those schools is in a body bag.”

He looks to a certain head of orange hair in the crowd.

“Anyway, I’ve got to see a guy about a thing. It’s been… well, it’s been something. I’ll see you around, Junior.”

“Yeah, yeah, try not to get yourself killed.”

“Sure, sure.”

He waves the information broker goodbye and takes his leave. A pulse of aura shreds the bandages covering his form. They fall away to reveal perfectly healed and healthy skin, free from and sort of scars or blemishes aside from the three, whisker-like markings across both his cheeks. In short order, he summons his mask, brushes his hair back, and fits the mask to his face in one smooth motion, an invisible weight lifting from his shoulders at the feel of the bone-like material against his skin.

_‘Hm…? When did I become so used to it, I wonder…’_

“Oh my, who would have thought the _infamous_ White-Faced, Gold-Tailed, Demon Fox was such an adorable, young boy underneath that scary, scary mask. Your fans will be elated.”

Naruto glances at the source of the patronizing drawl. Orange hair. Bowler cap. Way too much eyeliner. The contact meets him halfway, wearing a fashionable white blazer and toting a plain-looking, black cane.

“I don’t have any fans.”

“You’d be surprised,” Green eyes roam over him, from head to toe and back up, looking at him like a fine-cut piece of meat. The man smiles, hums in satisfaction and tucks his cane under his arm, extending a hand.

“Roman Torchwick.”

“… Uzumaki.” Naruto takes the offered hand after a moment of hesitation.

“Now I hear you are looking for work… perhaps I can be of assistance?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late release. I’ll generally try to update on Sundays unless something happens, like it did this week. I had planned to do a double release, but this chapter is the only one I got to finish… and I didn’t particularly enjoy writing it so I understand if it doesn’t quite stand up to the previous one. Feel free to have at it. It’s one of those ‘I want to write A-scene and I want to write B-scene but if I don’t write this, it won’t make any scene how we got from A to B’.


	3. Chapter 3

Ashen blue eyes begin to droop beneath a three-eyed fox mask.

A yawn bubbles up from under the bone-like material. Sitting up, Naruto reaches under his mask to rub the sleep from his eyes.

He sits atop the roof of an apartment complex. His ragged, white haori is spread out beneath him, over a plain, long-sleeved, dark shirt and black pants and military grade, combat boots. Letting himself fall back onto the grey tiles with a ‘pomf’, he spreads himself out like a starfish, basking in the light of the broken orb in the sky.

Remnant’s shattered moon shines brilliantly in the distance. It is as though someone had gone and trapped all of the shadows and darkness in the world and sealed it into an orb of light, only for that darkness to break free and escape out into the sky.

As a child, he’d always wondered how the moon got like that. Broken, shattered, and desperately trying to put itself back together, only to inevitably fall back apart, again and again and again and again.

“Hup-!”

Naruto jumps to his feet, pats the dust off his clothes and makes his way over to the ledge.

A man and a woman walk alongside their child, standing protectively at the boy’s sides.

A drunk shambles through the streets, looking for more alcohol or a place to pass out.

An office worker waits at the bus stop, yawning with the fatigue of a ten hour shift.

Each and every person goes about their lives, doing their own things for their own reasons. People of all shapes and sizes roam the streets, cuddled together under the blanketing shroud of darkness, blissful in their ignorance. Unknowing, or perhaps just uncaring, of the dangers prowling the night.

How lively.

The crackle of static comes from his haori. He digs a handheld radio out of the white cloak, holding it up to his ear. “Yo. There any reason in particular we can’t just use our phones for this like normal people?”

_“Don’t ‘Yo’ me!”_ an angry voice snaps from the other end. Probably one of the goons that guy hired to be his entourage. _“We’re right about to start! Where are you?!”_

“Heh, are you guys still pissed that I’m getting paid like nine times more than all of you? There’s a reason for that, you know. If we were getting paid in terms of usefulness, you morons basically wouldn’t be getting paid. At all.”

_“That’s… you don’t have to be so harsh about it…”_

“Mm. Pretty sure I do, considering you somehow think pumpkin head hasn’t already noticed that I’m not down there with you.”

_“What do you mean?”_

“Trust me, it’ll be _a lot_ less work for all of us if I just stay up here until things go south. And by less work, I mean there’ll be less chance of a hunter showing up to stomp your faces in.”

_“H-hold on a sec, you know, the way you’re putting it almost makes it sound like we’re just here to serve as bait…”_

“Well, yeah.” Naruto admits with no shame whatsoever. Honestly, what else are those morons good for? “So, put on a mean look and do your best~.”

_“Hey, wait a se-“_

He tosses away the radio and chuckles. “Too bad for you. I’m not here to make sure everything goes smoothly, just to keep pumpkin head from landing his ass in prison for the umpteenth time. Ah~, if my luck holds I won’t even have to do anything tonight!”

… Still, it’ll probably be a good idea to scope out the area. On the off chance things go the way they tend to go whenever he’s involved.

Silver eyes look up as a shadow vanishes from the rooftop in a flicker of gold.

* * *

That disrespectful brat!

How dare he talk about him and his associates that way, as though they aren’t even worth the air they breath. They’re human beings with hearts and souls, too!

Actin that way… kids these days have no respect. Or at least that one in particular.

Damn freak of nature.

“Alright boys!” their employer, Roman Torchwick, announces, a freshly lit cigar held between his lips. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

It begins.

They swagger down the streets of Vale. The civilians scurry away in fear at the mere sight of them, the baddest men in Remnant, armed and ready to beat down anyone who dares to stand in their way.

At a crossroads, they find their mark, a dingy looking shop with an old sign reading ‘From Dust to Dawn’. A mere glance at the building reveals a complete lack of guards or cameras or any semblance of security aside from a withered, old geezer at the counter, looking ready to keel over if you so much as breathed in his general direction.

Too easy.

A chime rings as the door opens. Torchwick enters first and they follow soon after, their faces set in a variety of angry and menacing expressions.

It lines the windows, hangs from the walls in cylindrical tubes, fills the shelves and glimmers beneath the counter. In every color from vibrant red to pale blue to clear white, in every form from crystalline gems to silken powder, the strange substance fills the shelves of the small store.

Dust. The lifeblood of civilization.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a dust shop open this late?” Roman asks, his tone polite. Affable. Almost friendly. He speaks softly, as though he doesn’t need to threaten or intimidate the old man to get what he wants.

After all, that’s their job. On cue, Steve shoves a loaded gun in the old man’s face.

The old man stumbles back, throwing his arms up in surrender.

“Please, just take my lein and leave!”

“Shh, shh, shhh,” Roman hushes the old man. “We’re not here for your lein.”

“Grab the dust.”

At his command, the goon squad spreads out to stuff every possible speck of dust into their pockets. A certain disgruntled thug moves to raid the stock on the shelves when the sound of music catches his attention.

He turns to find the source of the noise, wrapped up in a bright red hood with her nose buried in the pages of a weapons magazine.

The thug draws his sword with a scowl.

“Alright girlie, put your hands where I can see them!”

… Nothing.

The little girl in red doesn’t even bother to look up from her magazine. Grinding his teeth together, the thug approaches the vertically-challenged girl, the sting of the demon brat’s words still fresh on his mind.

“Hey, I said hands in the air! You got a death wish or something?!”

“Huh?”

 A tap on the shoulder and the girl finally acknowledges his existence. She gives him a questioning look, her rose-themed headphones blasting music at deafening volumes.

Really, if he hadn’t accosted her, they probably could have grabbed the dust and left and she would be none the wiser. But, for the sake of the pride trampled all over by that demon brat, this girl will just have to pay the price.

The thug gestures at his ears. The little girl removes her headphones and answers with a polite, “Yes?”

“I said, put your hands in the air!” he growls. “Now!”

“Are you… robbing me?”

“Yes!”

“Oooh…”

* * *

 

Of Heroes and Monsters

Chapter 3: Fate and Fools

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, his luck did not hold.

The sound of shattering glass pierces the peaceful night. The pop and beat of some rock song he’s sure he’s heard somewhere before blares into the streets.

_“This will be the day we’ve waited for! This will be the day we open up the door~!”_

Perched atop the roof of a nearby building, Naruto looks in the direction of the dust shop.

“What did those idiots do now?”

He brings his hands together, his fingers forming a seal in the shape of a cross. Aura rushes into his hands. With a pop, two identical clones emerge from clouds of smoke, exact copies down to his mask and haori.

“That window was probably rigged with a silent alarm,” the original says. “If it was, the police are already on their way.”

Both clones nod, vanishing from the rooftop in golden starbursts of embers. Naruto makes his way to the edge of the rooftop and looks down towards the dust shop across the street.

Her pale features seem almost to glow in the moonlight.

Deep shades of crimson highlight her shoulder-length hair, shifting from a brownish black at the roots to a dark crimson at the tips. Her clothing follows much the same color scheme, a bright red hood over a black blouse and combat skirt, both accented with the same bright scarlet as her hood.

“… Is that a scythe?” Naruto asks no one in particular as the girl takes a giant, unfolding _something_ from behind her. “Yep, that is definitely a scythe.”

His eyes do not deceive him. It is a little girl with a scythe taller than her, taller than him in fact, no doubt seconds away from thrashing the group of worthless goons.

They may look mean and scary, but those guys really are useless when it comes to fighting. By no means is the little girl in any danger.

At all.

If anything, the thugs are the ones who probably need protecting, a notion confirmed when the scythe-wielding girl dodges the swing of one of the thugs, planting a picture perfect drop kick into his face. He holds back a groan as the girl proceeds to effortlessly thrash Torchwick’s mook squad.

Of course things won’t be so simple. Why would they be? It’s not like the most innocuous seeming missions for him always have a habit of going pear-shaped in the worst possible way.

He still has nightmares from the Dust-Candy Incident.

The groan becomes a sigh and escapes from his lips. Grumbling, digging his nails into his spiky, white locks, he prepares to move.

“This sort of crap is why my hair’s already gone white…”

As much as he’d love to kick back and watch Steve get manhandled by a girl half his size, at this rate, there’s a good chance that girl is going to get in over her head. The goons aren’t a threat to anyone with so much as a hint of training. But if Torchwick himself gets involved, especially with all that dust he just got his hands on…

Better to end it now on his own terms instead of waiting and taking that chance.

Aura surges through his body. Swirling currents gathers around his feet. Beneath the three-eyed fox mask, blue eyes flash gold. With a clap of wind, he closes the distance in a single step, appearing behind the girl with a simple chop aimed at the back of her neck. A quick strike to knock her out without much trouble.

Silver eyes whirl around. And the girl disappears into a storm of rose petals before his attack can connect.

“… Oh?”

For a moment, he watches as the rose petals dissolve into motes of crimson aura.

Then, a deafening crack comes from behind him. He takes a step forward, pivots on his heel and leans his head back as the back of the scythe head misses his mask by mere inches, crashing into the street with enough force to crack the pavement.

He takes another step back. She takes another step forward. Lifting the bastard child of what he can only guess to be a scythe and a sniper rifle, the sniper-scythe-thing wielding, little girl lunges at him. She swings at him twice. She misses twice. He dodges each of her attacks, the force from each passing of the giant metal scythe-head tugging at his haori. Finally, the scythe-blade descend in an overhead slice and Naruto lunges forward, channeling aura into his arm.

The barrel/shaft of the sniper-scythe catches on his forearm. The asphalt cracks beneath his feet. Naruto pushes forward and a surprising amount of strength pushes back against him, the girl planting her feet, her boots sliding backwards ever so slightly as she braces both hands on her weapon.

_‘She’s not anchoring herself with aura,’_ he thinks, glancing downward at her feet. His gaze drifts to the scythe. _‘And seeing as how I’m pretty sure this thing can turn into a gun…’_

He looks from the metal monstrosity to its wielder, the red-clad girl only a little bit shorter than him.

_‘So… a huntress, eh?’_

Bright silver meet smoldering gold.

And, for whatever reason, the moment as their eyes meet, her strength wavers. He takes the opportunity to push her away. She lands on her feet, quickly taking a stance with her weapon held out behind her at the ready.

“Hi there.”

She almost drops it when Naruto gives her a friendly wave. She checks to her right. Her left. Behind her. Realizing that he is, in fact, talking to her, she awkwardly shifts.

“Um… hi?”

“Nice scythe.”

“Oh,” she seems to perk up at that. “Thanks!”

“Freaky eyes though.”

“Wha- Hey!“ the insult catches her off guard and she tries to stammer out a response. “ _Your mask_ is freaky!”

“That’s kind of the point.”

“Well, well, well, look who finally decides to show up!” his employer sneers, poking his head out from the dust shop. Roman Torchwick welcomes the masked boy with a glare. “And just what exactly took you so long?”

“You know how it is, the hero always arrives at the last second,” Naruto says with a cheesy thumbs up and a sparkle in his eyes. He pauses. “Well, I guess I’m more like a final boss who just so happens to be helping the starter-bad-guy. But you get the idea. It’s aaall about making that first impression.”

“S-starter bad guy?! You brat!”

Ignoring the crime lord’s indignant rebuttal, he turns back to the red scythe-wielder. “So how about it? You scared?”

This is said in the most casual, unthreatening tone possible.

“Not really…”

He crosses his arms. Tilts his head. “You sure?”

“Yeah, you… kind of remind of Yang, actually… weird.”

“What’s a ‘Yang’?”

“Ah, she’s my big sister! You don’t know her… I hope…”

“Sister?” Naruto turns to his employer. “Isn’t ‘Yang’ a guy’s name?”

Roman Torchwick stares at the masked brat. His eye twitches. Cheek twitches. There is a moment as his brain tries to process the sequence of events of the last few minutes before it proceeds to throw its hands up and say, ‘fuck it’, prompting him to reboot his brain via the application of a palm to his face.

“I… don’t care,” he says in a half sigh to the masked boy’s question. He lets his palm fall from his face. Looks to the sinkhole where the other half of his money went, also known as the five grown men currently drooling into the pavement. Another sigh escapes his lips and Roman Torchwick directs a glare at the white-haired bane of his existence.

“Alright, you know what? Let’s do this,” He jabs a finger at the red-hooded girl. “Never mind the morons, _I_ will get the dust. You just keep that girl and her giant weed-whacker away from me.”

“You got it pumpkin head.”

With a growl, the mobster slinks back into the dust shop. The red-hooded girl moves to run after him, only for Naruto to step in her way.

“I know he has a very punch-able face and while I am _technically_ not getting paid to stop you from doing that, he’s actually not too shabby with that cane of his so there’s a good chance that if you two fight, he’s just going to do to you what you did to Steve.”

The girl gives him a confused look. “Steve?”

Naruto gives a light kick to the thug just outside the window. “This is Steve. Say ‘hi’ Steve.”

The thug groans.

“Yeah, I don’t know what color ‘Steve’ is supposed to be either,” he shrugs. “So anyway, in the interest of you not getting Steve’d, how about I promise to give him a couple of good kicks for you and you be on your way?”

“But-“ she looks to the old man watching helplessly as his livelihood is stolen away from him. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, kick him a few times now?”

Naruto looks to the store. “I could. Kind of want to, actually. Unfortunately, that will make it very difficult to do what I’m actually getting paid to do, so I won’t.”

She goes to her right. He takes a step to his left. She tries the left. He goes right. She huffs and gives him an admittedly adorable pout as her attempts to go around him are thwarted.

Then, a blink. The girl looks to him, looks behind him and vanishes in a flurry of rose petals.

_‘Did she just remember she could do that?’_

The mass of swirling crimson shoots to the side, whipping around him, making a beeline for the store. Naruto sighs. Uncrosses his arms. Wind and aura swirl around his feet, around his arm.

Golden embers follow and overtake the rose petals in an instant. He appears in front of her, between the swirling rose petals and the dust shop with his arm cocked back and a sphere of super-compressed air in the palm of his hand.

Burst, howl and roar. The sphere is released, wind escaping in the form of a massive blast of air, the gale lacking in concussive force but still carrying enough power to throw the storm of rose petals across the street. The girl tumbles out of the swirling crimson, quickly turning her tumble into a roll, and driving the scythe-blade into the street to catch herself.

_‘She’s fast…’_ Naruto muses, watching one of the crimson petals scatter into aura. His eyes drift to the girl and her weapon. _‘If she wasn’t lugging around that massive-ass scythe, she might even be faster than me.’_

A gunshot cracks through the street. Aura reinforces his hand. The bullet meets his palm with a crunch and a slight flash of gold, leaving little more than a small red mark before it clatters to the street. Two more shots crack through the street. Two more flashes. Red nHe blocks them both all the same, the bullets all but bouncing off of his aura.

_‘I suppose if I can just keep her busy… ugh. This really does leave a bad taste in my mouth…’_

Beating up little girls and robbing old men? Normally he would never touch a job like this, not even with a ten foot pole. Call him a masochist or whatever, but it’d be a lie if he said he didn’t prefer jobs more along the line of his previous one, even with all the pain and injury that came along with it.

“At least I don’t have to kill anyone today…” Naruto mutters under his breath. “Whatever kind of bright side that is…”

She kicks the blade free from the pavement, giving the sniper-scythe a twirl before taking her stance, knees bent with the scythe head pointed down and behind her.

“It’s not worth it,” he warns, shaking his head. “Don’t be a hero, girlie. All heroes get are their name on a tombstone and an empty grave.”

An image flashes through his mind. Of a place he once called home. Of the hundreds of names carved into a simple slab of stone. Of the stupid little kid who spent hours looking at that stone, wondering if his parents’ names were written somewhere on there.

He never did find another ‘Uzumaki’. No matter how hard he looked.

The crack of a gunshot pulls him from his bittersweet musings. Instead of a bullet, the red-clad girl fires herself, leaping forward on the recoil from her giant weapon. Aura surges into his right hand, enough aura to wreath his hand in a golden, ghostly flame.

A clap of metal and wind. He catches the swing, stopping it cold, fingers wreathed in flame gripping the top of the scythe blade. Naruto throws the weapon back. The red-hooded girl spins, flourishing the sniper-scythe about her body and bringing it back around for another slash.

Her finger pulls the trigger attached to the barrel. The hollow clap of a gunshot rings out, the scythe-blade firing into a deadly arc. He side-steps the oncoming blade, flips over a horizontal swing, ducks under a sweeping slash. Another gunshot rings out and the scythe-blade comes back around with renewed force and vigor, Naruto parrying the swing with only his hand, his aura protecting against the metal edge, motes of red and yellow aura scattering into the air.

Crimson and gold flash each time he deflects her strikes. Empty casings clatter to the pavement. A flurry of crimson assaults him as she bleeds the momentum from one swing into the next and the next again, twirling the giant weapon and slashing with an expert hand. He counts ten shots before the trigger clicks empty, the momentum behind the sniper-scythe bleeds dry and the girl leap back to reload and catch her breath.

_‘The way she uses the recoil is a lot like how I use wind manipulation to boost my body flicker,’_ Naruto observes as the girl pulls a fresh magazine from the bandolier around her waist. A magazine labeled with four arrows, pointing to a single dot. Gravity dust, if he is not mistaken. _‘To be able to weave that into her swings… she’s pretty good. Maybe I was a bit too hasty in thinking she’d have trouble dealing with Torchwick. Well, either way…’_

_‘Torchwick should almost be done on his end. I ought to wrap this up now. It’d be troublesome if she decided to chase us with that speed semblance of hers.’_

The flames enveloping his hand flicker and fade. The fire fades back to ash. With cold blue eyes, he looks to the girl, the exhaustion creeping into her form obvious even from this distance.

Still, she grips her weapon. Still, she is searching for some way past him. She looks behind him to the dust shop and back to him. Her features tighten in frustration. She slides one leg back, pumps the bolt action and-

_-a single strike straight through the heart, her aura shattering like glass, warm crimson gushing out of her back and painting her clothes red like-_

-falls to a knee, gasping desperately as beads of cold sweat roll down her brow. She grabs at her chest as if to confirm no, she had not just died and there is in fact not a giant gapping hole where her heart should be, even if it feels like said heart _is_ only a few short moments away from beating its way right out of her chest.

“Sorry, that was a bit stronger than I intended,” Naruto admits. “But I think you get the message now.”

**“You can’t beat me.”**

He stands over her, watches as she struggles to steady her breathing. “Leave. Go home. Forget about tonight. Live, be happy. Humans have only got one life to them. Don’t throw it away for something as stupid as a little bit of dust. That sister of yours is going to be real sad if you don’t come home.”

“I know…” she says between panted breaths, almost too quiet for him to hear. A shadow falls over her eyes, the girl crouched, curled almost into a ball as she leans on her weapon for support. “And… And I can tell you’re stronger than me. Way, _way_ , stronger. I know there’s probably no way I can beat you, but…!”

She forces herself to her feet, the resolve in those silver eyes not faded in the slightest.

“I… I can’t just walk away when there’s someone in front of me who needs help! Even if you’re stronger than me, even if there’s no way I can win, I still have to fight!”

A lever is flipped. A switch pressed. Metal plates and pieces slide into place, a spring-loaded mechanism triggering in the sniper-scythe as the silver-eyed girl flourishes her weapon, the scythe blade rotating 180-degrees and snapping upwards to take the form of a more traditional war-scythe.

“Because that’s why I want to be a huntress! So I can help people! So I can save those people who can’t save themselves!”

She pulls the trigger. A black flash comes from the muzzle, rocketing her forward. Fast. Even faster than before. A streak of crimson and rose petals shoots across the street, this time coming straight for him. The scythe-blade descends with blinding speed, all of her weight and momentum behind the downward swing.

Aura engulfs his hand. Naruto slashes his hand upwards to counter. Wind bursts, embers and rose petals scattering all around them, the street cratering beneath his feet and the shockwave knocking the red-hooded girl back and away, throwing her into the air.

She rights herself with a flip and another shot from her weapon. Shot number three comes mid-swing, the girl slipping away into a stream of rose petals. Four. Five. Six. The motes of crimson swirl around him as she accelerates with a trio of gunshots, circling around him, engulfing him in a storm of flittering red.

Blue eyes narrow, flickering with gold.

A crack comes from behind. He jumps upwards, flipping over a blur of crimson as it carves a gouge into the street below. A burst of wind shoots him back down as a bullet whizzes over him. Another crack. The silver-eyed bullet flies at him on a trail of scattering crimson. He plants his feet, brings his hand up and prepares to catch the blade-

**_DODGE_ **

-only for his instincts to scream bloody murder. Having taken a rigid stance, all he can do is throw himself back as the scythe blade descends, tracing a line of white hot fire through his hand, into his mask, entering from just above his eyebrow, slicing past his right eye to exit halfway down his cheek.

Blood splatters onto the street. Everything in the right-most corner of his field of vision blinks out. For a moment, it is as if his body has turned to stone, every muscle locking up in response to the ungodly pain radiating from his face, as though someone had shoved a still-burning coal straight into his eye socket. In the back of his mind, he hears the rattle of chains, every ounce of his willpower forcing his body to be ready to move, to be ready to dodge the next strike.

A strike that never comes, the girl frozen in place, looking every bit as surprised as he is, an expression of horror blooming over her face.

“O-oh my god!” she gasps, almost dropping her weapon as she begins to run over to him. Through the pain and past his flickering vision, he sees those silver eyes wet with worry and would swear that they seem even to dim ever so slightly. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I-“

He holds up a hand to stop her. Her voice fades in and out. Numbness encroaches on his consciousness. It comes, a soothing embrace to take away the pain. And with every fiber of his being he clings onto that pain, clenching his bloodied fist, squeezing his cut eyelids shut together. _’Crap. Can’t pass out in a place like this…’_

His healing factor may let him tank hits that’d kill anyone else. But damn if they don’t still hurt like a bitch.

“I’m sorry…” she says in a weak voice. The girl swallows a lump in her throat.

“Do you need… help?” she asks, her voice none too subtly tripping over the very last word and falling into a tiny squeak.

“I’m fine…” he grunts, stumbling back only one step. Naruto cradles his face with his good hand, half to stop to bleeding, half to check if his mask fell. It didn’t. Good. “I’m fine, just give me a second…”

Seriously. Just what the hell? One second she can’t even land a hit and the next she’s cutting through his aura like a hot knife through butter? That’s such bullshit. To randomly get a power-up when you’re fighting an opponent you should have no chance in hell of winning against…

…

_‘Well, what goes around comes around… I guess…’_

A moment passes. Steam and smoke escape from under his mask as aura rushes to the site of the wound. He takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Takes another, straightening his back and removing his hand from his mask, the bleeding having already stopped.

“Well, _I_ gotta _hand_ it to you.”

“Wha-?” It takes her a second to process his words. When she does, her eyes widen slightly and _oh my god he did not just make a pun-_

“Definitely didn’t _see_ that one coming!”

“Guuuuh…”

A groan escapes her lips, the silver-eyed girl’s expression trapped somewhere between guilt, worry and exasperation. “S-so are you okay?”

“Ha!” he takes a pose, one hand on his hip with the other extended. “As if the mighty Demon Fox needs to worry about a little scratch like this!”

“ _You’re_ the Demon Fox?!” she asks, sounding genuinely surprise.

“Duh. Who else would wear a mask like this?”

“… I don’t know. The White Fang?”

“Hey. Don’t lump me in with those losers.”

She blinks. Blinks again. “Huh. So you’re the Demon Fox…”

His good eye twitches. “… Why do you sound so surprised by that?”

“I mean, I’ve heard of you but I kind of always figured you’d be… scarier? And taller, I guess?”

“Okay, that hurt more than the eye.”

“Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?!”

“Sure. We can meet up there. You go first. I’ll be there in, say, twenty minutes.”

“Well…” she retakes her stance somewhat reluctantly. “If you need to go to the hospital or something, just let me know… I can get there pretty fast with my semblance, so…”

Naruto chuckles. “Trust me red, on the sliding scale of ‘How Badly I’ve Been Maimed’, losing an eye is pretty down there on the list. So don’t feel guilty. You should be proud! Congratulations! You are officially the first person to have ever sliced out one of the eyes of the evil Demon Fox! How many little hunters-in-training can put something like that in their applications?”

It is praise, wholehearted and meant truly to lift her spirits. Alas, if anything it appears to have the opposite effect, the shadow of guilt over her eyes only darkening.

“… Thank you, though.” He says, his voice not quite as loud but that much more sincere. “The worry is refreshing. Usually whenever I take a big hit like this, the one who did it just starts gloating and monologuing.”

That seems to brighten her gaze a little. She lets out something not quite a chuckle, a tiny smile tugging at her lips. “Really? You mean like what they do in manga?”

“Yup.” He puts a hand on his hip. “And you know what happens when they’re done with their monologue?”

“Uh… you power up and kick their ass, right?”

“Huh, wow you actually got that.”

“Oh yeah, I actually read a lot of those types of fighting manga! I know it’s kind of weird since I’m training to be a huntress and you’d think I’d bored reading about people training and fighting and getting stronger but I actually really like reading those, since you know, I can understand what they’re going through! And…! And I… oh.”

**_“HAAAA-!!!!”_ **

The lone blue eye ignites. He clenches his fists at his sides as the first chain breaks and his aura rushes forth, pouring into the world in a torrent of light and sound. A gale storm descends upon the intersection, Billowing winds surge past him. Golden flames roar through the night, engulfing the street, coiling around him and gathering above him into the shape of a giant, grinning, fox head, his haori swaying in a very carefully crafted breeze.

“Okay, I take it back!” she cries out, staring with wide eyes at the fox head made of golden fire as her cloak billows around her. “That’s scary! That’s super scary! Can we go back to just the glowing eyes, please?!”

“Nope!”

The flames vanish into a single tail of glowing gold. The winds gather and condense into a single point in his palm, erupting down the street in an oncoming wall of destruction, ripping down lampposts, stripping concrete from the sidewalks, slicing chunks out of the pavement. She jumps upwards, firing a shot into the street to propel her into the air and over the violent winds.

Black and white with little bits of smeared red fill her vision. Naruto appears in front of her, one arm cocked back.

She just manages to bring her weapon up to block. The fist crashes into the barrel, the strength behind it rattling her bones even through her aura. She crashes into the street. Before she can get back up, he appears again in another swirl of gold, punting her across the street like a giant red soccer ball.

A bounce and a bounce. Tumbling into a roll, she returns the sniper-scythe to its regular form, drives the scythe blade into the street to catch herself. A sound reaches her ears, a kind of hollow ‘whoosh’ that she had heard only moments before the masked boy first appeared. Just like last time, she looks over her shoulder, expecting a quick chop to the back of her neck.

And Naruto descends, a hammer of wind and force. Rather than aim at the girl, he aims for her weapon instead, his feet meeting the back of the barrel with a thunderclap of air, his boots stomping the scythe blade all the way into the street. Through his feet, past his boots and into the pavement, he channels his aura, anchoring the scythe blade to the asphalt.

“Aaand~, you’re done,” he declares, standing and crossing his arms, stepping one foot off the trapped weapon. “A little girl with no weapon to protect herself has no place here. Shoo, shoo. Go on, get out of here.

She looks to her weapon. Gives it a few tugs, finding it well and truly stuck. Still, the resolve in those silver eyes does not dim in the slightest, the girl instead clenching her fist and throwing a punch at his face.

Alas, her fist has nowhere near the effect her sniper-scythe did. Her knuckles crack against the bone-like material of his mask and she cradles her bruised hand.

“OW! What is that thing made of?!”

“I dunno. Why do you keep aiming for my face? It’s, like, the only part of my body wearing anything remotely resembling armor. Literally, the only part.”

This time she goes with a kick. One he catches with ease, his tail whipping around to trap her ankle, holding her leg in the air.

“H-hey, let go!” she whines, struggling to free herself.

“Hm. Honestly, I was expecting a nut shot there,” he admits, keeping her leg trapped. “Whelp, good on you for not living _down_ to my expectations, wolfie.”

She pauses in her struggling to give him a confused look. “Wolfie?”

He tilts his head to make his line of sight clear. “Wolfie.”

Her cheeks turn the same color as her hood.

“You can see that?!”

“Yeah, probably not the best idea to be kicking people in a skirt.”

“It’s a combat skirt, you _pervert_!”

“Oi. Who’re you calling a pervert?”

He lifts his tail, lifting her up until she dangles upside down by her leg, like some sort of misbehaving, small animal. At the height and distance he holds her, there is little more she can do than push down(up) her skirt to protect what is left of her modesty as Naruto steps off the buried sniper-scythe and frees the weapon with a single, good yank.

Hefting the weapon over his shoulder, he strolls back across the street, dumping her in the center of the group of suited thugs just now getting back to their feet.

“You know the drill,” he says to them, his tail dissipating back into aura. “Tie her up. Make sure your hands don’t wander. And by the way, while I’m sure you guys are embarrassed that you got your collective asses kicked by a little girl-“ “Hey!” “-if any of you tries to take a potshot, especially after _I’m_ the one who had to clean up after your screw up, rest assured, my boot will more than happily pick right back up where she left off.”

The thugs slink over to follow his orders with muttered grunts. With that, Naruto makes his way over to his employer, shoving his hand into his pocket, balancing the sniper-scythe on his shoulder.

“Aren’t you the ‘noble gentleman’?” Roman Torchwick says, puffing on a cigar, a case full of dust in his other hand. “Did the sight of a defenseless, little rose prick your beastly heart?”

“Are you kidding me,” Naruto replies in a flat tone. “She’s, like, twelve.”

“I’m fifteen!” the red-hooded girl shouts angrily at them as two thugs grab her arms.

“Oh, same age then,” Torchwick smirks.

“Same age?” the girl blinks as the thugs tie her arms behind her. She looks to Naruto with surprise. “We’re the same age?”

He turns to her with a disgruntled look. “… When’s your birthday?”

“Er… October 31st?”

“Okay, good I’m still older,” he notes with satisfaction, turning back to his employer. He perks a brow. “And the hell are you still doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be making your grand getaway or at least running away with your tail between your legs?”

“You seem to have things under control,” the man in the bowling cap smirks, directing a bemused glance at the gouge in his mask. “I paid you good money, after all. May as well enjoy the show.”

“Riiight…” Naruto drawls. “Well, you guys should probably hurry up and get out of here. I won’t have any trouble dealing with more want-to-be-heroes, but with my luck, there’s probably a hunter on their way who’ll be a pain in the ass for me to fight and… Wow, I cannot believe I just said that out loud- MOVE!”

He grabs the man in the bowling cap and leaps away. The thugs are far slower to react, too slow to do anything but look upwards as a familiar salvo of purple lights descends on the street, blasting them away, the shockwaves kicking up a cloud of dust and rubble. A silhouette descends from the sky, landing in the midst of the dust cloud. A silhouette that he knows has enough control over their attacks to only blast away their intended targets, that would let no harm come to the red-hooded girl. Sure enough, the smaller shape of the girl stands, unharmed in the slightest, the rope binding her hands having seemingly come undone of their own accord. And the newcomer blows away the smoke and dust with a single wave of her hand.

Pale blond hair, styled into a bun. Frigid green eyes with a gaze sharper than daggers. There is not a single hair out of place, not a hint of worry or fear, not a single speck of dust dirtying her form, from the white blouse to the black pencil skirt to the devil-tailed cape swaying behind her. The woman levels a dismissive glare at the two of them,(mainly him, Naruto notes) as though they were nothing more than bugs and the only reason she has yet to step on them is because it isn’t worth the effort of cleaning them off her boot.

“You…” the girl whispers in breathless awe. “You’re a huntress.”

Roman Torchwick gulps, a bead of cold sweat running down the side of his head.

Glynda Goodwitch deems the red-hooded girl worthy of a glance, if only to make sure she is unharmed.

“Oh my god, I cannot believe this is actually happening right now! Eee~, Yang is never going to believe this! Can I have your autograph?!”

Naruto slaps a hand over his mask, shaking his head.

 

* * *

 

**AN: T-minus 24 hours for the next chapter. Hopefully. I have it all outlined but I have to finish writing it and send it off to my beta first. Atm, it is at 3k words.**

 


	4. Chapter 4

_‘Really… this child…’_

Naruto raises his head, moving his hand to cover the gash through his mask’s right eye. The wound is still there. The bleeding has stopped, the pain has dulled and his face has been stitched back together, but he can still feel it, aching and burning and itching as though something is eating away at it. Probably the same something stopping it from healing completely.

He glances downward at his hand. It is much the same as what he feels beneath his mask, a bloody gash over his palm, steaming, smoking and burning with tiny, rose petals flittering out from the open skin.

 _‘Is it a semblance?’_ Naruto clenches his hand into a fist. His lone eye drifts to the girl staring at the huntress with starstruck eyes. _‘No… she…  doesn’t seem like the type to have a semblance like that. Besides…’_

He has other things to worry about. For one, the woman currently trying to set him on fire with her eyes from across the street. Luckily for him, she is not one of the two remaining Uchiha, so all her glare does is make him just a bit angry that the dumbass to his side did not take the chance to get away while he could.

Regroup. Don’t get distracted, Naruto tells himself. First deal with the woman who looks like she wants to tear him a new asshole, then worry about his eye and hand.

“So, uh…” he calls out somewhat hesitantly. The huntress narrows her eyes. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Goodwitch? Haven’t seen you since the last time I was in Vale!”

A sheepish chuckle. “You… wouldn’t happen to still be angry about that whole business with the ramen, would you?”

Her response comes in the form of her flicking her riding crop to the side, an invisible force hurling Naruto across the street, slamming him into and through a nearby building.

There is a moment as Roman Torchwick stares at the smoking hole in the wall.

“You have no idea how long I was waiting for that to happen,” the man mutters.

“Now, as much as I would like to stay and enjoy some more catharsis by proxy,” he says, taking out a red dust crystal and raising his cane, an aiming reticle popping out of the bottom. “I’ve got a ride to catch! So, this is where we part ways!”

He throws the dust crystal and takes aim. The red stone curves an arc through the air. A flare shoots from the bottom of the cane, whistling through the street, straight on a course to hit the dust crystal as it falls before the huntress.

She does not even raise her hand. She does not need to. A mere glance causes both the flare and the dust crystal both freeze mid-air, hovering mere inches away from each other with a purple glow surrounding them.

Glynda takes the dust crystal into her hand. A mere glance at the suspended flare causes it to shrivel up into nothingness.

The mobster stares with wide eyes. His cigar falls from his lips. The huntress turns her gaze on him and Roman slowly raises his hands up in surrender, letting out a sheepish chuckle. “Haha… surprise? That, ah… went a lot differently in my head.”

She takes a moment to identify him. “Roman Torchwick, you are under arrest. Come quietly…”

Glynda flings the dust crystal into the building where she had launched the masked nuisance. Raises her arm. Clenches her hand into a fist.

And the building explodes, its windows shattering, the door splintering, flames blasting through the brick walls as the piece of fire dust ignites into a massive ball of heat and force. It begins to collapse in on itself, only for the falling mortar and flying glass to slow to a stop. The building freezes in time. Billowing smoke escapes its crumbling frame. Fire leaks out from the broken walls, heat and smog beginning to fill the street.

Then, her arm falls and the building falls with it. The ground breaks apart, rippling like water, swallowing the fire and the smoke and the entirety of the flaming building like a pool of quicksand, the stone moving with a mind of its own as the crumbling structure disappears into the earth, leaving only an empty lot in its place.

The crime lord stares at the spot where a three story building once stood.

“… or you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Now, now, no need to get violent,” Roman says, his voice coming out a couple pitches higher than he’d have liked it. He lowers himself onto one knee, making sure not to make any sudden movements. “We’re both reasonable adults here. Between you and me, I totally understand your level of reaction to that masked moron. Honestly, the boy has some special kind of talent for getting on people’s nerves. Definitely justified.”

The street behind the two females cracks.

“But me and you? You and me? We’re both civilized, attractive, not prepubescent adults here, so I don’t understand why we can’t just talk this out and-“

Flames smash through the asphalt, flickering red and blazing yellow erupting into the sky. The masked boy bursts from the flames, two tails of golden fire trailing behind him, his left eye a bloody red and the sniper-scythe pulled back.

The huntress whirls around, throws out her hand. The scythe blade lashes forward. The air trembles as his swing meets an invisible blast of force, the shockwave throwing him back. He flips, lands, digs his tails into the asphalt to catch himself, carving two gouges into the street. His boots skid to a stop. Aura floods his legs and feet. A thunder crack of wind launches him forward, his takeoff smashing two tiny craters into the street, as though someone had set off a pair of miniature explosives under his feet.

A blur of gold and crimson. Aura and wind propel him to superhuman speeds, a speed that could overwhelm even the most battle-tested of hunters.

But the woman before him is no ordinary hunter.

Her arm snaps up. A circular barrier of purple runes and seals appears before her. Naruto crashes into the barrier, his shoulder meeting the glowing purple with a force that shatters the ground beneath him. The purple runes vanish. Their master snaps her hand up. The shattered ground rises up, sharpening into a volley of stone daggers. Naruto dashes backwards on a burst of air. The stone daggers shoot after him and a blast of wind smashes through them, crashing and dissipating harmlessly against another glowing, purple barrier as he leaps upwards, over the barrier, swinging the sniper-scythe downward with enough force to slice a grown man in two.

She raises her riding crop. His swing is stopped, the sniper-scythe frozen in space. One of his tails whip around, wrapping around her wrist, yanking it to the side and throwing the riding crop from her hand. The force locking the sniper-scythe in place disappears. Naruto falls, lands in a crouch. He bursts upward, a swing of the sniper-scythe forcing her a step back. The scythe-blade lashes forth in a flurry of red and gold strikes, his form learned but very clearly out of practice.

She dodges each swing with minimal effort. Not a hint of worry mars her expression, the huntress’s face a cool mask of professionalism. Without even raising her arms, despite the pencil skirt, the scythe-blade fails to reach her. Her semblance alone is enough to keep the weapon from finding its mark as jade eyes wait and watch for an opening.

They find one. He overextends on a swing. Her hand snaps out and again the sniper-scythe freezes, frozen in space. Her other hand motions to the side. The riding crop flies back into her hand. Golden tails smash against the street, sending chunks of shattered asphalt flying towards the huntress.

Without even looking, she raises the hand holding the riding crop, index and middle finger extended.

The stone stops. Breaks apart, sharpens into a wall of daggers. The wall descends on him, forcing him to leap away, the stone shards burying themselves into the street. She whips the riding crop downward and back up, a giant chunk of asphalt ripping itself free from the ground and becoming a flock of spears, each easily six feet long.

Naruto tosses the sniper-scythe into the air. Slaps his hands together, his fingers blurring into motion. The spears shoot at him and he catches the sniper-scythe, driving its blade into the street.

A wall of screeching electricity leaps upward from the blade, smashing the black spears into ash, stopping them from reforming, and descending on the huntress. A wave of her hand causes the lightning to circle around her and back again, gathering into a sphere of wind and lightning. The orb balloons to the size of a small car, wind condensing around an eye of crackling light, tendrils of electricity arcing through the outer layer of the sphere.

A flick of her wrist launches the orb of storms, the ball of wind and lightning barreling down the street. Aura flows to his feet, to his free hand. He holds up an arm, catching the orb as it crashes into him, a stream of wind aura protecting his palm, bringing the sphere under his control. And into that stream he releases a single spark of flame, the spark catching, igniting, blooming into the sphere and devouring the wind to become a globe of bubbling red and snapping yellow.

A pulse of wind sends the giant ball of electrified fire roaring right back down the street. The huntress jabs her riding crop at a nearby fire hydrant, an invisible blast of force blasting the hydrant open. Water erupts upwards, spraying into the air. She traces a spiral with her hand, the water gathering, gushing into the street and swallowing the fireball, burping out steam and sparks.

The riding crop snaps forward. At her command, the waters surge forward, a tidal wave to crush the masked boy. A single, wind-enhanced slash splits the wave in two. A blast of super-compressed air follows, stripping the pavement from the street, forcing her to release her control over the torrent of water and summon a barrier. Naruto disappears into a swirl of golden embers. The blast slams into the barrier with a thunderous crash, releasing a shockwave that shatters every window of every building around them, becoming a harmless gust as it passes by her, ruffling her hair.

The huntress drops the barrier, finding only a slightly flooded street with not a person in sight before her.

There is a brief lull. Having taken shelter in the dust shop, the thugs poke their head out to see if it is over.

The red-hooded girl peeks out from behind Goodwitch.

Naruto reappears on her other side, next to Torchwick.

The huntress and the boy in the grimm mask stare at one another, each waiting for the other to make a move. She raises her riding crop. His muscles tense. And that tension drains as she whips her riding crop around, the cracks and craters and other damages to the street behind her all repairing themselves before his very eyes.

 _‘Ah, that semblance really is just satisfying to watch,’_ Naruto muses, the water swirling back underground as the fire hydrant puts itself back together. He looks to the wielder of said semblance. _‘Now, if only I could find a way to get her to stop trying to turn me into a pincushion with it…’_

“Jesus Christ,” Roman Torchwick finally finds his voice, sounding horrified and amazed in equal measure. “What the _hell_ is in all of that ramen you eat?!”

Naruto shrugs, offering a hand. “Still enjoying the show?”

“’Enjoying’ isn’t exactly the word I would use,” the mobster grumbles, taking his hand with a grimace.

“Shame.”

He pulls the man to his feet. A lone, crimson eye turns to the huntress.

“Old hag.”

Her gaze becomes that much sharper, lips wrinkling into a frown. “Demon Fox.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take a raincheck on the whole ‘us beating the tar out of each other’ thing?” he asks, holding out a hand as his tails flick behind him. “I’ve got to make sure pumpkin head and the goon squad get home safe and sound. You’ve got to babysit wolfie over there. As much as I love watching that semblance of yours in action, I’d say it’s in both our best interests to just call it a day.”

“You’re a fool if you think I will allow you to simply walk away,” she snaps at him. “Arson. Murder. Theft. Kidnapping. _Rampant_ sexual harassment. For years you have been a plague on these lands, coming and going as you wish, doing as you wish, taking as you wish with no thought of the consequences of your actions. Yet, for whatever reason, the powers that be have deemed your continued freedom less of a concern than whatever matters happen to be on hand.”

“No more,” her eyes narrow. She raises her riding crop, arm over her chest with the tip pointed behind her. “Tonight, I will have you pay for all of the suffering you have wrought. Surrender, lay down your arms and come quietly. You may be little more than a child in a mask, but if you continue to resist, I will show you no mercy.”

Naruto barks out a laugh. He glares at the huntress, his lone eye a molten pool of contempt and crimson.

“You call _that_ mercy? Trying to electrocute me in boiling hot water? Trying to impale me, collapsing an exploding building on top of me?! I see! Of course, it all makes sense! After all…”

A tremor makes its way through the street. The air around him begins to spark and combust, coils of crimson-gold flame spiraling upwards.

“You are the brave huntress, risking your life to protect the innocent! That little girl! This old geezer! Of course, how could anyone say you are anything but a hero?!”

An inky darkness creeps across the white of his only remaining eye. His pupil becomes a fissure of shadow in the pool of crimson, the heat in his heart feeding from the pain in the right side of his face, from the flames pouring out from behind the seal on his stomach. A third tail takes form behind him, strips of shadow running down the length of each tail.

“And I… I am the Demon Fox! A monster who has taken oh so many lives, bloodied himself from head to toe in crimson. My very existence is dyed in dripping, gushing red! At the feet of someone like you, how else can I repent but through _death_?!”

“That’s your mercy, isn’t it, _Professor Goodwitch_?” Naruto sneers, holding the sniper-scythe at his side, the coils of flame beginning to wrap around the blade. He lets out a bitter chuckle. “Though, you aren’t wrong! In this world, death is its own mercy. Alas, I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell you to shove your mercy up your ass.”

“I may be a child in a mask! But I’m a child in a mask with the power to blow you and this entire fucking Kingdom to smithereens! All I have left is this life of mine! And after all the crap I went through to get this power, everything I’ve sacrificed, everything I’ve lost, you better believe I’m going to use all of this power to make sure I don’t lose anything else!”

He grits his teeth. Bites down on his tongue and his anger. He brings his hand to his mask, pressing it over the gash to smother the pain gushing from his ruined eye. It takes a monumental effort to calm himself down. He hadn’t even meant to release a third tail. It had been a combination of the huntress’s words and the pain from his un-healing injuries that had coaxed it out all on its own.

For whatever reason, she says. What a joke. He’d even laugh if it didn’t feel like someone was pressing a clothing iron up against his face. There is not a doubt in his mind that she knows damn well why Vale has always tried to keep their hands clean of anything involving him. Naruto looks to the huntress, the woman appearing slightly taken aback by his sudden outburst. And that is nothing to say of the girl at her side.

He takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh, the flames surging through his body no longer feeling like they are about to run away from him.

“Now, then…” he lowers his hand. Glances up. Above, a news helicopter hovers far in the distance. “Neither of us can fight without reserve, but if you won’t back away, neither will I.”

“Glynda Goodwitch, Right Hand of the Wizard. Elite Combat Instructor of Beacon Academy... Why don’t we put on a show for the viewers at home, you and me? I’m actually getting kind of excited… it’s not every day you get a second chance to fight one of the people to have faced the Fourth Hokage in battle and lived. Though, that really isn’t much of an achievement is, it?”

Taunting, biting, full of spite and bitterness. The jovial, light-hearted tone from before is nowhere to be found in the masked boy’s voice as he addresses the huntress.

“Namikaze never did have the greatest track record of actually _finishing_ his opponents.”

Her expression turns thunderous. “Insolent child… the Fourth was a good man who gave his life in protection of his people.”

“That mask…” her off hand clenches into a fist, rage clouding her gaze. “The beast to which you owe your namesake… even those tails… it is as if you tailored your very existence to spit on his sacrifice. That name… you have no right to utter that name!”

“Kukuku…” Naruto chuckles. “You know, I almost forgot how much you guys like to _ride that guy’s dick_ here in the Kingdoms. It makes enough sense I suppose. There really wasn’t ever a more ‘huntsman-like’ shinobi than he was.”

“Even the way he died, throwing his life away fighting the grimm-!“

The riding crop snaps forward, a loud crack echoing from its tip. Naruto raises his arm across his chest, the sleeve on the back of his forearm exploding as he swings his fist back around, an invisible blast crashes into and through the wall of a building behind him.

“Whelp, I’d say I have successfully gotten her attention,” Naruto muses, looking to the slight bruise over his forearm. In a matter of seconds, the discolored skin shrinks, fading back to its usual parlor. He glances back at his employer. “I would suggest you make tracks, Torchwick. If the Right Hand is here, the Great and Terrible himself probably isn’t too far behind. I can buy you some time… but I don’t know how much.”

It takes the mobster a second to get over his shock. Half from the sheer power he can _feel_ rolling off the boy almost a good foot shorter than him, half from the shock of said boy actually using his real name.

“… And here I was worried you wouldn’t have to work for all of that lein I paid you,” he says with a shaky smirk. Roman fixes his hat. “Do get in touch if you manage to get out of here alive. I happen to know of someone who would be more than appreciative of your particular skills and talents.”

“Is that right?” the masked boy drawls with a mental fist pump. “Well, I’ll think about it.”

Glynda narrows her eyes. She raises her off hand, a miniature barrier of purple runes buzzing to life over her palm. Naruto flourishes the sniper-scythe, the flames spreading from his hand, creeping up the barrel and over the blade, sheathing the weapon in a cloak of flaming gold.

He clenches his teeth, the wound under his mask burning like a branding iron pressed up against his face.

“Go!”  


* * *

 

  
Of Heroes and Monsters

Chapter 4: No Good Deed…  


* * *

 

  
“Neither of you will be going anywhere,” the huntress hisses.

She holds out the hand with the weird, glow-y runes. A low pitched whine fills the air and the entire street behind the two criminals begins to rise up, forming a wall-

The masked boy disappears. Ruby Rose blinks. It is almost like one of those effects from a horror movie, where one second the monster is standing there and then the next he has vanished without a trace. One moment, there is a boy in a grimm mask with three tails of flaming gold standing next to the man in the bowler cap and the next, there is only the man in the bowler cap, a swirl of fading embers the only trace of the masked boy remaining.

Jade eyes widen. The huntress throws up both her arms, a circular barrier of purple runes appearing in front of them.

And a shockwave almost throws Ruby off her feet as a hand slams into the barrier, the Demon Fox in all of his fiery, golden glory appearing before them, his tails fanned out behind him and a windstorm of force trailing in his wake.

“Didn’t I **tell you** …?” a guttural growl comes from underneath that horrifying mask. The huntress winces, falling back a step as his fingers dig into the array of purple runes, cracking the barrier like glass.

**“Your opponent is me!!!”**

With a sound like fracturing ice, the barrier shatters. The barrier that had stood up to the masked boy’s attacks again and again shatters, and he lunges forward, Crescent Rose poised to take the huntress’s neck.

The huntress dodges the swing with an almost casual air. She steps to the side and brings down the arm holding the riding crop in one smooth motion. An invisible force smashes the masked boy against the ground. The street erupts upward into a spike, impaling him through the stomach. Another swing of the riding crop releases that same warped crack as before, an unseen blast of telekinetic energy crashing into him, launching him across the street, into and through the upper-half of the wall behind the man in the bowler cap.

It all happens in the span of less than ten seconds. And in next, a very familiar gunshot rings out from behind the remains of the wall as a blur of gold smashes through the bottom half and in an invisible force throws Ruby to the side. The huntress summons another barrier and immediately dives to the side, the masked boy slicing it in two with a single swing, his tails forming into a monstrous, three-fingered claw as he flies past them, the claw slamming into the street to stop his forward momentum.

 _‘What is even happening?!’_ Ruby thinks to herself. _‘I… I can’t even keep up with them!’_

Where did it all go so wrong? All she wanted to do was read the latest Weapon’s Monthly and enjoy the last few days of summer before school starts. Then again, it was actually going pretty well. Sure that guy tried to mug her, but he was a total push over. Kind of lucky that he did, actually. If he hadn’t, she probably wouldn’t have even noticed the place getting robbed. That would’ve been embarrassing.

But she did notice. And as an aspiring huntress and a good civilian, there was only one thing to do. Things were going pretty well.

Then _he_ showed up and proceeded to put his foot somewhere between her lungs and colon. Which, in a sense, is also kind of lucky, considering, from what she is currently seeing, he very well could have simply opted to put his foot _through_ her lungs and colon and saved himself the trouble.

And an eye.

Shockwaves and explosions echo through the street, purple and gold clashing against each other with boundless skill and overwhelming strength. Spears fly. Gunshots crack. The very world bends to the huntress’s command, shaping itself into spears and arrows and invisible blasts of force, conjuring barriers of luminescent violet. Even so, the meteor of gold smashes through them, slices them to bits and crushes them with absolute power. For the moment, they appear to be evenly matched. For the moment, the huntress is able to keep away from the crimson scythe blade and golden tails, flipping and dodging with a surprising agility and flexibility for her uptight appearance.

But slowly, ever so slightly, the huntress appears to be tiring. Her movements are less sharp, less crisp, beads of sweat beginning to drip down her brow. Meanwhile, even as he takes injury after injury that would easily put any other fighter down for the count, the masked boy seems only to accelerate, moving with a speed that makes even her semblance look as slow as a turtle in comparison, his clothing taking the brunt of the damage as his wounds seem to heal as soon as they appear.

All except for his eye and that slight cut over his right hand.

The man in the bowler cap and the thugs and probably even that old man are long gone. And she probably should have been too. But…

But…

It paralyzes her. Shakes her to the core. Not just the realization of how easily the masked boy could have turned that vision of her death into a reality, but that he chose not to, laughing and joking with her even after she sliced out his eye.

That he, the criminal, is fighting a desperate battle against the huntress to give his comrades a chance to escape.

That she, the huntress, is the one trying to bring about his death. That she came here to kill him.

The hero trying to destroy. The villain trying to protect. It is wrong. It is all just wrong, and she cannot help but watch, cursing her own powerlessness and inability to do anything to correct the wrongness in front of her.

A crash. The street shakes beneath her feet. A flick of the riding crop sends the masked boy careening into the street, his haori and shirt in tatters to the point where Ruby isn’t sure where she is supposed to look. In an instant, he flips back onto his feet. The asphalt shatters as he becomes a streak of blazing gold on a course to run straight over the huntress.

A trio of violet barriers take form to bar his path. He smashes through the first two on his momentum alone, a flail of his tails breaking through the third. The flaming scythe blade of Crescent Rose slashes at the huntress and she tilts her body back, letting the swing pass over her. She jabs the riding crop at the back of the sniper-scythe, forcing it to the ground, the street opening and closing around the top of the scythe head.

She brings up her other hand. He whips around, his tails wrapping around his other arm, forming a massive blade about his forearm. A slash forces her to defend, the golden blade scrapping against a miniature circle of violet runes.

“Hmph-!”

With a grunt, he rips the scythe blade free of the street, bringing it down in an overhead slash. The huntress flips backwards into the air as the swing smashes a crater into the street. Instead of falling back to the earth, she hovers in mid-air crossing both arms over her chest.

Golden tails flash forth, splitting apart into a trio of flaming spears. She doesn’t dodge. Maybe because of the huntress’s aura, her semblance or maybe for some other reason, the spears veer ever so slightly off course, only slicing her shoulder, side and cheek instead of impaling her down the middle as her hands snap forward, a sound like a cannonball being fired from a canon resonating through the night.

The masked boy is crushed into the asphalt. A purple glow engulfs the street. Great slabs of pavement smash together, burying those golden tails deep beneath them, forming into a coffin of stone and sinking into the earth as a seal of purple runes spreads over them, spires of ice sprouting from the runes, stabbing through the coffin and entrapping it in ice.

Then, the sky shivers. The air pulses. A sound like nails scrapping against a chalkboard amplified a hundredfold fills the street, the frozen prison shattering along with the entirety of the street, stone and ice falling apart as though cut to pieces by a hundred invisible blades. Even her own footing is slices to pieces and Ruby begins to fall as the street caves in on itself.

Jade eyes snap to her. A force takes hold of her and the huntress swoops in to grab her. She takes to the sky as night turns to day and three, massive tails of glowing light emerge from beneath the rubble, each easily three stories tall, each forming into a giant, clawed hand at their ends, and each lunging for the huntress.

She flies around them, panting ever so slightly, landing on the roof of a building. The hands smash into and through the building and the huntress flies higher into the air, holding Ruby under her arm.

She draws the riding crop back. A giant seal of purple runes appears above them, one large enough to cover the entire intersection. Stone and rubble rises, the entire street taking into the sky and forming a legion of spears. The temperature drops. A chill crawls over her skin. A second seal appears before them, a blue-white crystal shatters and the moisture in the air condenses, a second swarm of frozen daggers forming rank in front of the spears of stone.

The riding crop falls. The storm of ice and stone descends. Daggers and spears, blue-white, grey and black, fall like rain, stabbing into the glowing hands. Slowly, the hands begin to fall beneath the weight of the rain of stone, collapsing back underground. The light vanishes. The huntress flicks her riding crop again, the street reconstructing itself, restoring itself to a pristine state in a matter of seconds.

Panting and sweating ever so slightly, the huntress hovers over to the roof of another, nearby building. She sets Ruby down and kneels over, putting her hands on her knees as she gasps for air.

“Is…” Ruby takes a moment to adjust herself, looking around. “Is it over?”

“In your dreams, wolfie.”

The voice comes from behind her. She almost trips and falls over nothing as the source of the voice appears behind them in a flicker of golden flame.

He looks just the same as when she first saw him. No gouge in his mask. No tattered haori. Not even the slightest sign of exhaustion or fatigue. With Crescent Rose hefted over his shoulder, the White-Faced, Gold-Tailed, Demon Fox regards them with amusement.

“Yo.”

He gives them a wave. Ruby steps in front of the huntress, the older woman obviously in no shape to fight another battle against the seemingly immortal Demon Fox. And the huntress grabs her shoulder with a surprising amount of strength, shoving her behind her.

“Stay behind me,” she says, trying her hardest not to let her exhaustion show.

“So I’m just going to go ahead and say it,” the masked boy says. “Seriously? You can fly? Since when can you fucking _fly_? Whoever trained you must have really taken that whole ‘Good-witch’ thing and ran with it. By the Sage, that semblance of yours is so cool! I mean, I can fly too, but when I do it, it’s really a lot more like me kind of hovering there, you know?”

The huntress says nothing. Ruby stares at him, trying to figure out just how someone _supposedly_ her own age can fight a huntress and come out the other end totally unscathed.

“It’s not like me, cause you know, White-face,” he touches his mask. “Gold-tailed. Oh, I have fun with that sometimes. But really, it’s like they couldn’t decide what to call me and just shoved it all in. “That way, _surely_ anyone who has heard of him will be able to recognize him on sight!” I bet those old geezers were all like that, patting themselves on the back. Lot of people just call me the Demon Fox. Or the White-Gold Fox… but most just go with Demon Fox.”

“How…”

“Hm?”

His gaze turns to her, both of his eyes a striking, pale blue. Both eyes. Not just one, wreathed in a burning, spiteful crimson. Ruby swallows a lump in her throat. There is a part of her relieved to see that she hadn’t seriously injured him after all. But even so, for him to be able to heal a wound like that so quickly, even while fighting against a huntress…

“How are you so strong…?” she asks.

“Well,” the masked boy puts a hand on his hip with a chuckle. He looks to the huntress, his eyes flickering red. “You spend six years with people like _her_ trying to kill you every other week, you tend to get that strong. That or you die. One or the other.”

He taps his mask around his right eye. “But, as I’m sure you’ve seen today, I have this nasty habit of not dying when I’m killed. So really, there was only one thing I could do!”

From the casual air with which he explains it to the matter-of-fact tone of his voice it seems like only common sense. As if he had just told her the sky is blue and the grass is green except for when it isn’t. Except… except…

“ _Six years?!_ ” Ruby blanches. That can’t be right. There’s no way. Because- “That pumpkin head guy said we’re the same age, right?! Fifteen, right?! So-“

“Since I was nine~,” the Demon Fox singsongs. He looks to the huntress with a dark chuckle. “First person to try to kill me was a teacher too! Funny.”

Ruby glances at the huntress, not sure what to expect. Fear? Anger? Pity? Definitely not the open-eyed expression of shock the woman is sending the masked boy.

She looks back to him. “But… why…?”

Her dad is a teacher. Her uncle was even a teacher, for a time. The teacher who had taught her everything she knows, the one who spent so much time and effort to mold the clumsy lump of awkwardness that was Ruby Rose into a capable warrior. For her whole life, a teacher has always been a bastion of knowledge and safety, a pillar to rely on. For someone like that to try to kill him… at only nine…

He lets one arm hang limp at his side. His eyes close and, for a moment, the ever-talkative boy says nothing. Then-

“Because I am the Demon Fox.”

His eyes open, a burning, molten crimson.

He takes a step. Hefts the sniper-scythe from over his shoulder, holding it at his side.

“I’ve answered quite a few of your questions, haven’t I?” the masked boy muses. “So, Rose, why don’t you answer one of mine?”

She stiffens at hearing him using her actual last name. The discomfort and shock only lasts for a moment, however. Just long enough for her to realize it really isn’t that much of a stretch for him to give her the nickname of ‘rose’, all things considered.

At least it’s better than ‘wolfie’.

“You said you want to be a huntress, right? So, you can be someone who ‘saves those who can’t save themselves’?”

He points Crescent Rose off into the distance, in the direction where the man in the bowler cap and his henchmen had fled. “Well, if you’re here to save that old man…”

He points at himself with the same hand holding the sniper-scythe. “… and she is here to save you.”

Finally, he points the weapon at the huntress.

“Then who’s going to save me?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Ah ha! Trick question. Like hell I need to be saved from a saggy old hag and some little girl who still wears wolf-print panties.”

“H-hey!”

“Right, sorry. Not saggy. Still an old hag.”

The masked pervert shrugs his shoulder back. Cracks his neck. “Anyway, I suppose I should be making my grand get away now. Stalled for long enough.”

Glynda narrows her eyes, raising her riding crop. Ruby stiffens as those crimson eyes look to her.

“By the way, wolfie? You might want to get out of the way.”

It appears without warning, coming from right behind them. A sound like a hundred fans all spinning to life at once. Recognition flashes over the huntress’s face as she whirls around with wide eyes, grabbing Ruby and throwing her out of the way.

She only has the time to summon another barrier before a glowing, blue sphere the size of a basketball rips through it like a wet sheet of paper, exploding and sending her hurling across the roof, towards the masked boy. He stomps his foot. A wall of stone erupts from the roof in front of him and the huntress slams into it.

“Guh-!”

She tries to raise her riding crop again. A white blur flashes across the roof top, their mysterious attacker grabbing her wrist and slamming her arm against the stone wall before she can do anything. They pulls back their other hand, five ghostly flames flickering to life over their fingertips.

It is the Demon Fox. A second Demon Fox, Ruby realizes as the doppelganger slams their hand into the huntress’s stomach.

The flames over his fingers burn through her blouse. Her eyes go wide like a fish. She lets out a wordless gasp, her entire body going limp and the riding crop falling from her grasp. The second Demon Fox releases her and the huntress falls, sliding down the wall, still alive but with her features locked in a pained grimace.

The first… the original(?) Demon Fox steps out from behind the wall, giving the downed huntress a sympathetic glance. “Uwaah, you didn’t have to be so harsh about it…”

He looks to Ruby. “See, our original could have just done that from the start, but he’s a rather stubborn child.”

“He’s the type that’d refuse to eat his vegetables, or that’d do something just because someone told him not to or would rather die than use the technique of someone he ‘hates’ to save himself,” the masked boy explains in a jovial tone. “Luckily for him, we clones aren’t quite so picky.”

“You’re both… clones?”

The Demon Fox holding Crescent Rose gives her a peace sign. “Hehe, yup.”

“You’re slow,” the second clone chastises the first clone in a cold voice, his eyes a chilling blue.

“I got here as fast as I could…” the first clone with blazing red eyes whines. “You’re just too fast…”

“You wrap up here. I’m going to make sure he doesn’t run into any other trouble.”

“Sure, sure~.”

The second vanishes in a swirl of leaves, leaving both Ruby and the huntress alone with the first clone. The one who, luckily for them, seemingly appears to have inherited the original’s lightheartedness.

“Sooo~,” the clone begins, drumming its fingers against its hip. “My, er, the original’s general policy is kind of like a reverse Golden Rule. You know, the whole ‘do to others what you want them to do to you’? Except flipped so it’s ‘do to others what they do to you’.”

 _‘Oh crap,’_ Ruby thinks as the clone looks to her.

“You cut out his eye.” The clone’s voice gains a dangerous edge and it takes a step towards her. “Again and again he told you to leave, but you were a _bad child_ and didn’t listen.”

Crimson eyes narrow, flashing with ill intent. Crescent Rose’s blade gleams ominously, the moonlight dancing upon its edge. “And bad children deserve _punishment_. Are you ready for yours?”

“Wait.”

It comes from behind, a desperate plea. The clone turns to find the huntress leaning against the wall, clutching her stomach and struggling to stand.

“Let me…” the woman pants. Those harsh jade eyes look from the clone to Ruby. “What she did… was foolish-“

Ruby winces.

“-misguided-“

Another wince.

“-and reckless. Tonight, she put not only herself, but countless others in grave danger.”

“Not entirely untrue,” the clone chuckles.

The silver-eyed girl winces again, resisting the urge to pull up her hood and curl into a ball to see if she can disappear.

“… _But_ …”

A sigh.

“She performed well and above what would be expected of a huntress in training.” Glynda Goodwitch finishes, her gaze softening ever so slightly. “Please. I will accept whatever punishment you have intended for her.”

Ruby stares at the huntress with wide eyes, the sheer exaltation of being praised by the huntress muted only by the thought of just what the masked criminal is about to do to her.

He looks to the huntress. Shrugs. “If you say so.”

She closes her eyes in acceptance. The Demon Fox turns to the older woman. He walks over, holding Crescent Rose at his side.

Ruby closes her eyes as well, unable to watch.

And instead of a sickening crunch, a fleshy, smack echoes over the rooftop.

Ruby furrows her brow. Peeks one eye open to find the clone standing behind the huntress with one hand raised as if he just… if he just…

She stares in disbelief, her mouth hanging slightly open.

The huntress’s eyes are wide and unblinking. As if she herself is having trouble comprehending what just happened. Or if her brain is having trouble processing the sheer rage and indignation she is currently feeling. One or the other.

“Bad girl.” The clone says in a flat tone.

“Did you just…” Ruby struggles to put words to her thoughts. As if she can’t even believe what she is about to say. “Did you just _spank_ her?!”

“What? You didn’t think I was _actually_ going to rip out one of your eyes, did you?”

Before Ruby can respond, in the time it takes her mind to process that yes, the clone does have a point, Glynda proceeds to whirl around, grabbing the clone’s head and smashing it into the wall. He bursts into smoke, Crescent Rose and all, leaving Ruby alone with the woman whose raw fury seems to be currently dying the air around her in a pitch black haze, her eyes wide like saucers and her pupils dilated into tiny little dots.

She lets out a forced chuckle as those green pinpricks turn on her.

“S-so uh… how about that autograph…?”  


…

“Well… that doesn’t look good.”

His clone had met up with him and they had escaped through the underground passageways that seem to go all throughout Vale. He should probably look into that later. But, for now, there are more important things he has to worry about. Of those things include, but are not limited to, getting the hell off Sanus before Goodwitch hunts him down and strangles him with his own intestines for what his clone just did, finding a place that actually sells ramen in the dead-fricken-middle of the night and figuring out just _what the hell that girl did to his eye._

An orange tracksuit with black highlights, decorated with blood red spirals, replaces his ruined haori and work clothes. A knapsack hangs over his shoulder, heavy with the weight of his sole, earthly possessions and the compact form of the sniper-scythe.

In the bathroom of a late-night convenience store, Naruto Uzumaki stares into the mirror. And only one ashen blue eye stares back at him, a curious wound over where his right eye should be. It runs from just above his eyebrow to right below his eye socket, the skin cracked and broken with… tiny, rose petals flittering out of the wound.

He blinks only his right eye. Somehow, someway, the eyelid is not broken. Instead, a line of flittering crimson runs straight over his eye, just offset of the center as though someone had drawn it on his face with a marker.

Moreover, despite having sealed his tails away once again, his right eye hasn’t changed back. The sclera is still black. The color of the iris is still a bloody, glowing crimson. The pupil is gone, leaving his eye a crimson dot in a pool of shadow with a line of flittering scarlet down the middle.

It… is healing. Slowly, but surely. The wound on his hand is gone and the cut is already much smaller than it had been initially. But for an injury to persist for this long, even after he had gone up to three tails…

“Uuuugh…”

Naruto groans, leaning against the sink. He closes his right eye. Swings his bag around and fishes out a piece of paper and his ink and brush.

“Whatever… I’ll worry about that girl and her freaky eyes later…”

It is a relatively simple seal, one just to mask the appearance of whatever is under it. It won’t heal him or let him see out of it again, but at least he won’t be walking around with a glowing, demonic eye of DOOM. He fits it onto his face, the rose petals disappear under the strip of paper, becoming a simple scar over a milky blue pupil.

Brushing his hair back, the white-haired boy sighs, takes a moment to check his appearance and makes his way out of the bathroom.

He buys a cheap, energy drink, downing it before he even gets out of the store. Makes his way down the street. Finds the closest bench and proceeds to flop down over it, giving all of no shits who sees him.

His entire body pulses with an aching agony, the waves of pain crashing against him with every little motion. He might not have gone four-tails, but three still takes enough of a toll on his body. Combine that with how he _had_ gone up to four only a few days before, throw in a pinch of having to fight freakin _Goodwitch_ , and the result is his current sad state.

“Damn clones… ugh. Didn’t use the Rasengan because I don’t need more people coming after me and asking questions…”

It’s not because he’d rather burn in hell than rely on anything that fucking piece of shit taught him to get out of a pinch.

Really.

A groan. Breathing hurts. Thinking hurts. Hurting hurts. It’s as though someone poured a bucket of slow-acting acid into his veins, letting the mixture spread before taking effect. Like his whole body is one big, sore, cramped up muscle and someone had just gave it a good, hard _poke_.

Naruto grunts. He attempts to roll off the bench, only to face plant straight into the sidewalk. Another grunt. Pulling his face off the ground, he gets back to his feet, making a quick right straight into the closest back alleyway.

He stumbles through the street. Leans on the wall for support. Deep bags hang under both his eyes, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his brow. Slowly, carefully, he navigates the trash and discarded foodstuffs that litter the ground, making sure not to step in anything that will stick or smell.

“It’s just past midnight… I’m hungry and tired… and limping through some shady back alley to escape getting the crap further kicked out of me by whatever it is this week that’s made my job go off the rails… huh. It Tuesday already?”

Just what did he do to earn this level of bad karma? Did he piss off some goddess in another life or something?

…

Probably did, actually.

And speaking of angry, pissed off and absurdly powerful women with, arguably justified grudges towards him…

Something’s changed. Before, of the places always sending people after him, Vale was one of the few to actively avoid any potential confrontations. Most of the time, whenever he came into conflict with teams of huntsmen from Sanas, it was both of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even his previous encounter with the witch had been a matter of circumstance.

But this time, it sounded like they had specifically send her out to try to deal with him. For whatever reason, the Council of Vale has decided they can’t just leave him to his own devices anymore. And they had even sent one of their most powerful pieces to enforce their will.

Why? What happened? Does it have anything to do with the White Fang? All these questions and more race through his mind, all but short circuiting his brain as he makes his way to one of the only places to get food this late at night. He shambles into a bar, plopping his face down onto the counter. His knapsack hits the floor with a thud. The bartender makes his way over with a frown.

“Sorry kid, we don’t serve minors after ten. You got an id?”

Something between a grunt and a groan comes from the mop of white hair. He reaches into his pocket, throwing a handful of lein onto the counter. The bartender eyes the lein with a twinkle of greed in his eye, but still shakes his head nevertheless.

“Nice try, but the answer’s still no. No kids under eighteen without adult supervision after ten.”

“He is with me,” a voice, his savior, comes from behind him.

“Hey, we don’t allow outside beverages in here- wait. You, you’re-!”

“My apologies. We’ll have a large miso ramen, please.”

The bartender scurries off to fire up the cooker. The owner of the polite and stoic voice takes a seat next to him.

“It is not often I find a boy with a head of hair as white as my own. Long day?”

“Something like that,” Naruto groans. Turning his head to get a look at his mysterious benefactor. “Used to be blond when I was a kid. Anyway, I don’t know who you are but tha…nks…”

Messy white hair. Kind brown eyes.  Leaf green scarf. The man gives him a slight smile, his light complexion and sharp facial features familiar to just about every man, woman and child in Remnant.

Headmaster of Beacon Academy and one of the most powerful men in the Kingdoms, Ozpin the Great and Terrible looks back at him.

It dawns on him, an understanding of just why the bartender had freaked out. Naruto rolls his face back onto the counter, attempting to become one with the bar.

“Is something the matter?” Ozpin asks in an amused tone.

“Ah, no. Just… contemplating my life choices. One minute please.”

 _‘FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-‘_  
  


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**AN: Apologizes about the chapter being so late. I actually sat down on the day I was SUPPOSED to publish this and hammered out 12 pages like it was a history paper due the next day, but I figured I’d rather delay the release just to polish it a bit. Hopefully it was worth the wait.**

 


	5. Crossroads

_‘-UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-‘_  
  


* * *

  
Of Heroes and Monsters

Chapter 5: Crossroads

* * *

The room is small, a cold, empty box with only a chair, a table and a light fixture hanging above it. She folds her hands together to calm her restlessness. A restlessness born less from fear or discomfort but more from worry. Worry over how that masked pervert disappeared with her sweetheart, the fiend out there doing who knows what with Crescent Rose. Worry over the thunderous expression over Professor Goodwitch’s face, the huntress currently standing a scant few feet away from her and watching her like a hawk. The sum total of the words exchanged between them in the past ten minutes had been a single ‘sit’, and she dares not test the older woman’s patience, no matter how uncomfortable this chair may be.

She never did get that autograph.

Beneath the huntress’s gaze, she cannot help but squirm, wishing she had her beloved Crescent Rose with her for comfort. And, inevitably, her thoughts again drift to the one who had stolen her sweetheart away from her.

The White-Faced, Gold-Tailed, Demon Fox.

An assassin of sheer skill and overwhelming strength with a confirmed body count upwards of five hundred. A boy, the very same age as her. A name feared throughout Remnant as the youngest S-rank to ever grace the pages of the Bingo Book.

Even she had heard of him. No matter how mismatched her vision of him was from reality…

“Lord Jiraiya? What are you doing here?”

“Glynda, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? As beautiful as ever, I see! As for me, I had some business with ol’ Oz. Asked him for a bit of a favor and he’s off taking care of that, so I came here in his stead.”

She had imagined a cold-hearted killer. A monster who reveled in bloodshed and suffering, the youngest to ever receive an S-rank designation in the Bingo Book.

She had imagined a demon. A true demon wearing the skin of a human. That was what she had expected to meet if she was ever unfortunate enough to encounter the one named Demon Fox. An expectation reinforced again and again by the occasional snippet of news she’d catch, an expectation reinforced by the fact that it appeared to be one of the _very_ few things that her father and uncle actually agreed on, the both of them seasoned huntsmen in their own right.

Not…

_“Nice scythe. Freaky eyes though.”_

Not…

_“As if the mighty Demon Fox needs to worry about a little scratch like this!”_

“This her? Summer’s girl?”

“She is.”

His words echo in her heart like nails on a chalkboard.

_“I may be a child in a mask! But I’m a child in a mask with the power to blow you and this entire fucking Kingdom to smithereens! All I have left is this life of mine-!”_

_“You spend six years with people like **her** trying to kill you every other week, you tend to get that strong. That or you die. One or the other.”_

_“-Then who’s going to save me?”_

_“Hi_ -“ “-there.”

Ruby Rose blinks, the muffled and somewhat childish voice in her head overlapping with a deep baritone from above. It is only then does she realize that there is in fact someone crouched like a frog on the table in front of her.

“Guwaah-!”

She reels back, her chair tilts over and she begins to fall, flailing her arms in a desperate attempt to regain her balance. The man brings his hands together. Not a moment later his hair, a bushy, spiky mane of white even longer than her sister’s, whips around, catching the back of her chair and pushing her back upright.

“Whoa…” Ruby marvels as the strange man’s hair returns to its ‘normal’ length. “Thanks… is that a semblance?”

“A semblance?! No, this, my lovely, young lass, is ninjutsu!” he grins, rising to his full height. Atop the table he towers above her, the man easily standing a good six feet all on his own and _how did she not even notice him enter the room_. He whips his hair around and strikes a pose, one hand held out towards her with the other on his hip. “The Second Hokage invented it so those of us poor chumps who didn’t draw so well on the semblance lottery can keep up with those of you who did!”

“Semblance lottery?” she asks, a small smile touching her lips.

She can’t put her finger on it, but there’s something about the man that just feels… familiar. From the horned forehead protector to the pale green, male kimono and red haori, there is nothing she recognizes off the top of her head, even though she would swear she’s seen those red tear trails and the wart on the side of his nose somewhere before.

“Your semblance, girlie, your semblance!” the strange man gives her a wink. “For every one of you out there who can run a hundred-meter dash in no time flat, there’s one of us who can’t walk five steps without slipping on a banana peel! Granted, that sort of thing does have its own uses in a fight, but the point is, for those of us who are S.O.L. when it comes to our semblances, we have crazy ninja powers!”

“Ninja powers?” a blink. “Wait, you’re a ninja? A real ninja, like one of those guys from the hidden villages?!”

“That’s right!” the man boasts. Then, his expression grows grave, the humor and bravado evaporating like mist. “I was meeting with an old friend of mine when your little display of heroics out there caught my eye. That was very stupid, what you did out there.”

“I-!” she opens her mouth to protest but her voice catches. The bubbling excitement from actually meeting a real ninja( _Both_ a huntress AND a ninja in one night!) becomes a ball of lead, dropping into her stomach. Ruby wilts under the older warrior’s gaze, unable to look him in the eye. “… yeah.”

In the end, what did she even do? Sure, she had taken care of those thugs, but other than that…

The Demon Fox could have killed her at any moment. But he choose not to. And she rewarded that mercy by slicing out his eye.

The whole time, Professor Goodwitch had to fight while watching out for her. And she can’t help but wonder, if the huntress had not first thrown her to safety at the very end, maybe she might have been able to dodge the attack that had led to her defeat.

Even the man in the bowler cap and the thugs had escaped with the dust. Without Crescent Rose, there was nothing she could do to stop them, even if she had chased after them. All she could do was nothing. What she did was nothing.

No, that’s not right. Worse than nothing, she became a burden. She wanted to help. And all her ‘helping’ had accomplished was injuring the two people who were both, arguably, trying to protect her.

“But, sometimes, stupid isn’t all that bad.”

Ruby looks up to find a small, warm smile on the man’s face. He plops down, landing in a seated position on the table, crossing his legs, putting his hands on his knees. The smile becomes a smirk.

“Miracles come from those stupid enough to believe in them,” he says. “You’re still young so it’s okay if you screw up. Make your mistakes, give it try even when you know you’re going to fail and let us adults worry about the clean up. As long as you learn from those failures, it’ll all be okay in the end.”

“Eh? But I-,” she struggles, fumbling for words as that led ball becomes a swarm of butterflies, all fluttering about in her stomach. “He- Er, _they_ got away…”

The man blinks. “They?”

“The Demon Fox and that other guy! Uh, the guy with the hat and the suit!”

The man gives her a blank stare. Ruby blushes in embarrassment.

“You know! That guy! That other guy! What did they call him… ‘pumpkin head’?”

“Oh yeah, he was there too I guess.” The man shrugs. “Meh, that guy’s in and out of prison like clockwork. Forget about Torchwick and the masked brat for a second.”

“I told you, there’s nothing wrong with failing as long you learn from it, right? Well, I think I might know a place that can help you out with that! But first, tell me a bit about yourself…”  


* * *

 

  
_‘-UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKK!!!!’_

_…_

He plasters on a smile and lifts his face from the bar, a very noticeable twitch in his eye and a bit too much teeth to his smile. “Sorry about that. But yeah, I’m Uzumaki Naruto.”

“Uzumaki?” Ozpin perks a brow. As if of all the names he might have expected, that certainly wasn’t one of them.

“Oh, that’s my surname,” Naruto explains. “Forgot you guys do given name first here in the Kingdoms. Sorry, I’m from Soshima so I sometimes forget to switch it around whenever I’m over here.”

Why the man is not currently trying to lobotomize him with that coffee mug(which he is 80% sure can turn into some kind of gun) is beyond him, but he won’t be one to complain about a free bowl of ramen. Who knows? It might actually just be a coincidence that he bumped into Ozpin… right after getting away from Goodwitch… alone in an empty bar…

Just a crazy, impossible and absolutely improbable coincidence.

“I see.” The huntsman takes a sip from his mug and gives him a small smile. “I was acquainted with a boy from the Elemental Nations some, thirty years ago. We worked very closely together for quite some time and one day, as that boy grew into a man and that man became a father, our conversation led to the topic of children’s names and the different naming conventions of our respective homelands.”

“In the Kingdoms, we name our children after colors to celebrate our individuality. In remembrance of the First Great War. Children from the Elemental Nations, however, are named with words borrowed from the language of their ancestors. As a means of remembering and honoring the sacrifices of the past.”

“Remembering and honoring, eh…?”

“Indeed. If I am not mistaken, your name in particular means ‘Maelstrom’.”

“Really?” Naruto blinks. “Everyone always told me it meant ‘fishcake’. You know, like ‘Narutomaki’?”

The bartender arrives with a bowl of ramen. Ozpin glances at the fishcake resting atop the soup and noodles with an amused chuckle. “That is another definition, yes.”

Naruto breaks a pair of chopsticks as the bartender takes his leave. “Huh… didn’t know that.”

“The second meaning behind your name?”

“Pretty much everything you just said.”

“Ah.”

With that, Naruto proceeds to stuff his face. For a moment, Ozpin regards him with a kindly gaze. He says nothing. Rests his elbows on the bar and laces his fingers together.

“Forgive me for prying, but what _is_ someone your age doing out this late at night?” the headmaster asks. “Haven’t you heard the commotion?”

“Ommuhshion?” Naruto mumbles through a mouth full of food. He takes a second to finish slurping up noodles, swallowing them all in a single gulp. “What do you mean?”

“The White-Gold Fox has appeared in this city.”

Naruto perks a single still-blond brow. Half for effect. Half because it is the first time he has actually heard someone else use that other way of shortening his overly-long name in a sentence.

“The _Demon_ Fox, huh?” he say in a nonplussed tone. “So that’s what everyone was freaking out about. What’d that guy do this time?”

“A simple misdemeanor, believe it or not,” Ozpin says. “Obstruction of justice. After a robbery gone wrong, he fought a seasoned huntress to a standstill to allow his associates to escape.”

“Really? He must be pretty strong, then.”

“He is. Remarkably so.” Ozpin agrees. A glimmer of curiosity enters his eyes. “To wield such extraordinary power at such a tender age… it is enough to make you wonder. Why would such a capable, young man choose to lead a life of crime?”

“Who knows?” Naruto refuses to rise to the bait. He doesn’t look away from his ramen, slurping up some more noodles. “Maybe he’s just an asshole on a power trip?”

“That is certainly the public’s perception of him,” Ozpin admits. “Yet, I believe there to be more to his story.”

The huntsman looks up the TV screen above the bar, images playing across the screen of a figure cloaked in golden flames fighting a huntress garbed in black, white and royal purple. “The circumstances behind his meteoric rise to infamy are almost as mysterious and enigmatic as the source of his overwhelming strength. No one really knows the truth of the boy behind the mask, only rumors and hearsay… that is, apart from his apparent taste for mischief and sexual deviancy.”

It is lucky. Were it not for the noodles in his mouth right now, he might have just whirled around and yelled ‘Who’s a sexual deviant?!’ at the man. Instead, he placidly slurps the noodles up, doing his best to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “I-is that so…?”

“It is,” Ozpin chuckles. “Even in his battle against the huntress, he went no further than neutralizing her. At first, I was concerned. When I saw that adorable little girl cut out his eye, I expected such a ‘ruthless’ mercenary to readily return the favor. Not spank her like a parent would a misbehaving child. I was pleasantly surprised… even if she wasn’t quite the one to receiving the spanking…”

That gets a tiny chuckle out of the white-haired boy. “Well, if your standard for ‘not a bad guy’ is not maiming someone who can’t fight back, you’ve got some really low standards.”

“Perhaps. Even so, even if it appears to be an insignificant act of mercy, it is still plenty to make one question why someone like this ‘White-Gold Fox’ would choose to live the way he does.”

The bar falls silent. Their conversation ends there. Naruto finishes the ramen without saying a word, almost mechanically shoveling the noodles and meat and vegetables into his mouth. It is not long until all of the food disappears, leaving a lonely fishcake floating in the bowl of broth.

“It’s not… I don’t think it’s that simple.”

Finally, the white-haired boy speaks, stirring the leftover soup. A single blue eye watches the fishcake swirl amidst the spices and bits of pieces of noodle.

“Sometimes… a lot of times, because of friends or family or a lack thereof, whatever the circumstances, people will find themselves doing things they regret. Bad things. Horrible things. And sometimes, because of those things, they begin to slip and fall into this bottomless abyss where the only way to survive is to keep doing those sorts of things, to live the same way as the ones responsible for giving them that initial ‘push’.”

He pokes the fishcake, pushing it down only for it to slip away and bob back up to the surface. Once. Twice. Three times, he pokes at the red swirl, trying to pin it to the bottom of the bowl.

“Some choose to die, stubbornly clinging to their beliefs. Some are rescued by those around them. A remarkable few manage to claw their way back up all on their own. But the others…”

On the sixth try, finally it sinks, breaking apart over the bed of spices.

“Nobody to save them and too selfish to drown, they become the very same as the monsters that created them.”  


* * *

 

“-I mean the police are alright and ninjas are cool too, but huntsmen and huntresses are just so much more romantic and exciting and really- gosh, you know?!”

There is a moment as the ninja and the huntress both look at her, one with amusement and the other with thinly-veiled exasperation. It’s a surprise really. You’d think the ninja would be the one all uptight and business-y while the huntress would be the accommodating and friendly one, Ruby Rose cannot help but think to herself.

“You know who I am?” the ninja asks.

Ruby Rose tilts her head. Squints her eyes and puts a finger to her lips. “No, but… I think, maybe… I don’t know. I _swear_ I’ve seen you somewhere before, but I just can’t remember where… maybe the news or something?”

The man grins. He leaps to his feet with surprising nimbleness for a man of his size, his kabuki sandals clacking against the tabletop as he strikes a pose.

“From east to west, I-!”

“This man is Jiraiya.” Glynda interrupts. The man shoots her an annoyed glare and she returns a dry stare. “He is-“

And in turn, a gasp of awe interrupts the huntress.

“That’s you?!!!!” Ruby shouts in pure glee with stars in her eyes. “Lord Jiraiya?! Jiraiya-sama, the Holy Toad Sage of Mount Myoboku?! One of the Sannin of the Hidden Leaf and the one who trained the legendary Yondaime, himself?! Oh! My! GOD! I cannot believe I’m actually meeting you in person!!!!”

“So you have heard of me!” Lord Jiraiya grins, putting his hands on his hips. He gives Professor Goodwitch a stink eye. “I’m glad _someone_ here recognizes my greatness.”

She responds with a flat expression and an even flatter tone of voice. “… It appears she forgot to add ‘shameless pervert’ to your list of titles, Lord Jiraiya.”

“How _dare_ you make such baseless accusations?! Jiraiya declares, jabbing a finger at the huntress. He whirls around to face her, raising his hands and making a vaguely disturbing, wiggling motion with his fingers. “I am no mere pervert! I am a SUUUUPER PERVERT!!!!”

The huntress stares, hopelessly, for another moment. Her shoulders slouch as the exasperation finally bubbles up over her features and a sigh escapes her lips.

“Oh yeah!” Ruby chirps. “And you’re the one who writes those pervy books that my whole family reads! Hey, can I have your autograph?!”

Glynda drops her face into her palm, shaking her head.

“Of course!” Jiraiya booms. “It’s a pleasure for an author to meet a fan of their work!”

“Ah, no, it’s not like they actually ever let me _read_ any of it,” Ruby grumbles. “Since I’m still a minor or whatever, Yang and Uncle Qrow are always telling me I won’t be able to ‘appreciate it’ until I’m older.”

“Well, as an author and an adult, I can’t _officially_ tell you to forget the rules and just go ahead and read it because no one in the history of ever actually pays attention to the content ratings system, buuut~…”

Jiraiya crosses his arms. Perks a brow, looking her over. “How old are you?”

“I’ll be sixteen in October!” Ruby says with a salute.

“Alright,” Jiraiya smiles. He leaps down from the table. Takes a small, orange book from his haori, scribbling his signature over it. “Here, early birthday present. Don’t open it until you’re sixteen.”

Professor Goodwitch removes the hand from her face to muster up a glare at the underaged girl.

“Ahaha, right,” Ruby shrinks into herself, hiding the book behind her. “Not until I’m sixteen.”

She’s totally reading it as soon as she gets home, if only to see just what the fuss is about. She won’t open it, though. After all, if the book _just so happened_ to fall on her bed, and she were to flip through the pages, that wouldn’t count as opening it, right?

“And here’s another early birthday present,” Jiraiya says, this time taking out an envelope. “This one’s not from me though, so you can open it up right now.”

“Really?”

She takes the envelope, breaking the official looking seal to retrieve its contents.

“This is… an acceptance letter?”  


* * *

 

  
Uzumaki Naruto downs the rest of the broth in one go, setting down the bowl.

“Well, thanks for the ramen, old man,” he says. “Guess it’s time to get down to business?”

This is going to suck.

Even if he does somehow manage to get away, even the ramen he just ate probably isn’t going to still be in his stomach come the end of the night.

“Let’s,” Ozpin turns to face him completely. “Do you know who I am?”

“Who doesn’t?” Naruto’s lips curve into a dry smirk. He closes his eye. “For Ozpin the Great and Terrible himself to descend from his clockwork tower to buy me a bowl of ramen. I’m honored.”

A slight chuckle. “Oh, I assure you, that was not my only reason for visiting Vale this late at night. The school year is about to start, after all. It is quite the busy time for my associates and I.”

“I’m sure it is,” the white-haired boy puts a hand on the counter and turns to face the headmaster as well. His only eye opens, regarding the huntsman with a cautious gaze. “So, you wouldn’t be here unless _those other reasons_ you have for visiting Vale required your personal attention…”

“Indeed.”

Slowly, silently, Naruto lowers his leg. His foot touches the top of his knapsack. A layer of aura causes the cloth to cling to the bottom of his sandal.

“Tell me, Uzumaki Naruto…”

His entire body tenses. With the back of his foot, he flings the knapsack into the air-!

“Would you like to come to my school?”

“… Eh?”

…

* * *

  
This can’t be happening.

This _cannot_ be happening. It has to be a dream. It has to be a dream, doesn’t it? That’s the only way to explain all of this. The _Demon Fox_ , one of the most infamous criminals in the world, making _Yang-level puns_. Meeting both a ninja _and_ a huntress in one night. And not just any ninja or any huntress, but _Lord Jiraiya himself_ and _Professor Goodwitch_ , an elite combat instructor at one of the preeminent huntsmen academies in Remnant. Beacon Academy. The place her sister would be attending this year. The place she hoped to one day apply and maybe, hopefully get accepted into.

The place she just received a full-ride scholarship to.

“Oh my god, oh my god-!”

“Sheesh, calm down, jumpy! Breathe! Now, before I go, sit back down a second. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Right!”

She returns to her seat with a flicker of her semblance, resisting the urge to kick her feet in glee. Ruby Rose hugs the letter to her chest, her face stuck in a wide and happy smile. Not even the way Lord Jiraiya somehow manages to pull a foldable chair out of thin air manages to phase her, the legendary ninja taking a seat at the other end of the table.

“You said you wanted to help people, right?” he asks, his smile growing a touch more somber. “To make the world a better place?”

“That’s why I wanna be a huntress!” she chirps.

“Have you ever thought about what you’re going to do when those two things end up on opposite sides?”

“… What do you mean?”

“There is… someone who I care very deeply for,” Lord Jiraiya admits in a sad tone. “Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate to stab me in the throat, but… I still care for him all the same. Even though he’s hurt plenty of people, even though the world would probably sleep a bit easier if he were gone, I still can’t help but care for him. I can’t bring myself to kill him, for all of my power and might as the Toad Sage. Because I know why he is the way that he is today. And I know it’s in no small part thanks to me.”

“When helping someone means making the world worse off,” the veteran ninja explains. “When making the world a better place means abandoning someone who needs your help. When your ideals and what’s right and what’s wrong just don’t line up, what are you going to do?”

“That…”

Ruby blinks. Her mind draws a blank. She looks down at the table, her smile becoming just a bit smaller. “That’s…”

_“-Then who’s going to save me?”_

“You don’t have to give me an answer,” Lord Jiraiya assures her. “It’s a question I still haven’t found an answer to myself. If I have my way, this’ll be the only time you ever run into this question. But, if I had my way, there’d never have been a Third Great War. If I had my way, you’d never have had to fight that masked brat.”

“It’d be nice, if things were so simple as good guys and bad guys, heroes and monsters. But in this world, everyone is the hero of their own story. And the monsters they face are almost always just someone else trying to survive, someone else just trying to help, someone else just trying to make this world a better place in their own way.”

His voice is warm and caring and full of kindness. And it feels like he just punched her in the gut.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says with a chuckle. “Of course, there are real monsters out there. The creatures of Grimm. And those people even worse than grimm. Those people who toy with others, break them, steal from them, take advantage of and control them. The ones who see those just trying to peacefully live their lives as cattle and sheep. There are plenty of freaks like that out there. But…”

A pause. She can feel the weight of the legendary ninja’s eyes on her. Eyes that seem to pierce straight through her skin.

“I’m sorry.”

“Ah no, it’s-“ Ruby blinks. Looks up to find the veteran of two world wars giving her a small, sad smile. She glances away, for some reason that smile on her face not feeling quite as stuck as it was before.

Like it is a few wrong words from falling right off.

“It’s just, it’s pretty late and, after everything that happened, I’m kind of tired, so…”

“That’s right,” Lord Jiraiya closes his eyes, clasps a hand on his knee. He raises to his feet, the folding chair bursting into smoke. “It is pretty late. Sorry for springing this on you… it’s just some food for thought. But forget about that, eh? You probably can’t wait to get home and share the good news, right? I’m sure your folks are worried sick. Don’t worry about the police, I’ve already sorted everything out with them.”

He looks to Professor Goodwitch. “The brat hit you with a seal right? To stop you from using your semblance? Here, let see if I can take care of that before I go…”

The ninja and the huntress take their leave. The steel door clicks shut behind them.

It isn’t until thirty minutes later that Ruby leaves as well.

 

* * *

  
He walks through the streets in a haze, putting one foot in front of the other with no real destination in mind. Maybe it is because it is late, he is tired and he hadn’t entirely expected to walk out of that bar with all his limbs still attached to his body. Maybe it is because what goes up must come down, and his knapsack and the _supposedly_ fifteen-year-old little girl’s sniper-scythe within had come down straight on the top of his head.

Whatever the reason, brain damage or otherwise, Uzumaki Naruto finds himself wandering the streets of Vale.

It has to be a trap.

_“Would you like to come to my school?”_

It has to be a trap.

_“No, I do not mean ‘in a body bag’. I was thinking more along the lines of as a student. You would enroll in this year’s freshman class. And before you ask, no, class is not a euphemism for prison.”_

“Has to be a trap…” Naruto mutters to himself, trying to silence the little part of him deep down daring to whisper _but what if it’s not?_

Because he’s seen this song and dance before. Because he knows how it goes. And he knows how it ends.

He’s no longer the little kid he was back then, too weak and inept to protect himself. Too stupid and naïve and desperate to hear anything but that little voice in the back of his mind going _what if_. He made the mistake of listening to that voice once.

He won’t make it again.

For now, he needs to get out of Vale. Lay low until everything blows over and Ozpin and the witch are too busy to try to hunt him down. Maybe he can get in contact with Torchwick after that.

But for now, he needs to talk to Junior. And after that, finally get some sleep, a precious commodity that has eluded him since the short nap he had on that train in Atlas.

A quick body flicker brings him to the information broker’s club in no time. And all he needs is a glance to tell that something is wrong. The club is silent, silent at the dead of night, peak hours for an establishment like this. The windows are boarded up. The sliding doors are closed with a ‘keep out’ sign hanging just out front.

Without a care, he goes around the sign, finding the doors still working as they open and Naruto beholds the inside of the club.

The inside is worse than the outside. Windows broken and furniture smashed with scorch marks covering the floor, it looks as though some kind of whirlwind passed through. Then set everything on fire.

He’s pretty sure there used to be a large glass pillar there.

For a moment, he says nothing, his lone eye scanning the trashed dancefloor. His lips thin into a frown. Crimson bleeds into his left eye, a dull ache coming from the right, Naruto unabashedly letting the cold rage course through his veins as the air around him drops a good five degrees.

“… Okay, who do I kill?”

There should be a recording or security tape somewhere.

“Jesus Christ!” a voice comes from behind the bar. “Naruto?! For Pete’s sake, cool it with the killing intent, you’re going to give me a heart attack!”

“Junior?” Naruto blinks and the crimson returns to blue. The chill vanishes just as quick. A small burst of aura and wind brings him to the bar, setting him atop the counter. It is there he finds the information broker kneeled over, halfway out of the stairs to the drink cooler with a sizable bandage over his cheek.

“The hell happened to your eye?” Junior grunts, getting back to his feet.

“… I was attacked by a small animal.”  Naruto responds after a slight pause. He perks a brow, looking around. “The hell happened to your everything? Where are Melanie and Miltia? They okay?”

“They’re fine, just a bit sore,” the information broker makes his way around, dumping himself on one of the bar stools. “Think they’re just resting at home. As for the club, we really could have used you the other night. Some, crazy, blond girl came in and trashed the place.”

“Huh.” Naruto throws his knapsack onto the counter and takes a seat. “Is that right? On a scale from one to me, how bad was it?”

“Can’t really compare most people to the shit you pulled when you first came around here.”

“Heh, I guess that’s true...” the boy says with a sheepish chuckle, scratching his cheek. “So what’d you do to her? Must have pissed her off pretty bad for her to do all of this.”

“Hey. For the record, _I_ didn’t do anything. Crazy bitch came in here looking for info about someone and manhandled my boys when I told her I didn’t know anything.”

“We talking your boy boys or your boys?”

“Both.”

“Ouch. Did you at least get some good shots in?”

“I wish. The girl was like some kind of berserker. Harder we hit her, the harder she hit us back.”

“Semblance or just holding back?”

“I’d say semblance, probably.”

“What, did she start turning big and green or something?”

“No… Kind of did the same thing you do, actually,” Junior muses with a disgruntled expression. “Eyes turned red, started catching on fire… in retrospect, that should’ve been a good a sign as any to run for the hills.”

A snort. Naruto smirks. “Sounds like it. You got a video?”

“Yeah, here.”

Junior puts his phone on the counter and taps the screen. The image is projected outwards and up through the camera, footage playing before them of a fiery blond ripping through the ranks of the suited thugs with a flurry of punches and kicks.

“Whoa,” the white-haired boy perks a brow. “She’s hot.”

Junior rolls his eyes with an unimpressed look. “Please. 6.5. 7 at most.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re just pissed she kicked your ass.”

“No, I’m not. She’s probably like, what? Half my age? You just think she’s ‘so hot’ because you’re both brats.”

“Whatever, _Junior_.” Naruto scoffs, turning his attention to the video.

“… It looks like she’s absorbing the force from your hits,” he puts a hand over his face, narrowing his lone eye as he scrutinizes the footage. “Putting aside the ones that just light everything on fire, most fire-based semblances revolve around the transformation of energy. She really is just turning the force from your own attacks against you… so kinetic backlash? Does she still take the damage from the hits or is it a complete redirection? Looks like she’s still feeling them so probably the first… but it doesn’t look like she’s using reinforcement, so she’s just blocking it with her aura? Does that mean it’s based off the damage her body takes or is it her aura? It’s a semblance, so the second makes more sense here, but-“

The feed cuts out as Junior taps the screen again and takes back his phone.

“Hey, I was watching those-that!”

His slip does not go unnoticed by the information broker. The man perks a brow. “Those?”

“Er…”

“You were staring at her boobs, weren’t you?”

“… A little. But hey, yeah. When’s the part where she kicks your ass? I wanna see that.”

Junior blinks, finding his hand empty and his phone back in the hands of the white-haired boy. “… How’d you do that?”

A raised brow. Naruto doesn’t even look away from the phone, fiddling with it excitedly. “I can knock someone out by looking at them the wrong way and you’re wondering how I just took your phone without you noticing?”

“Fair enough.”

Setting the phone back on the counter, the video returns, the playback starting off just as Junior walks out from the back of the club, a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

 _“You’re gonna pay for this.”_ The image of Junior declares.

Naruto muffles a chuckle. Junior smacks him on the arm. They watch as the man accidently rips out a couple strands of the girl’s hair and she promptly sends him flying out the window.

“… Awesome.” Naruto grins. “Here, let’s watch it again!”

He rewinds the video, playing it back in slow motion. Junior’s eye twitches as he watches the fist plow into his face at 0.5x speed.

“… Aaand~ one more time!”

“Alright, alright, you’ve had your fun,” the information broker snaps, snatching away the phone. “And you know, apparently that girl is going to _Beacon_ this year! Can you believe that?! I mean, I get that this isn’t exactly the most _upstanding_ establishment in the neighborhood, but you don’t go into a forest and expect there not to be any bears. What’s this world coming to when trainee huntresses are just going around, exploding and beating people up whenever they don’t get the answer they’re looking for?!”

Only silence answers his ranting. Junior perks a brow, looking to the white-haired boy at his side. There is a somewhat troubled expression upon the boy’s features, his gaze lowered and unfocused with his lips kept in a blank frown. An expression he is sure he would see much more often if teenaged mercenary didn’t always hide his face behind a mask.

“Naruto.”

“Hm?” the boy perks up. “Ah, sorry. Yeah, uh, sounds like you got your ass handed to you.”

And just like that it’s gone, replaced by an empty smile. Junior furrows his brow.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing, just…” a chuckle. Naruto scratches his cheek, resisting the urge to summon his mask. “Remember that thing I said a while ago? When we were talking about me going to a huntsman academy?”

“Ozpin or a body bag, right?” Junior recalls. “I heard you got into a fight with a huntress earlier. But, since it was you, I figured you’d be fine…”

He looks to the scar over the boy’s right eye. “… This wouldn’t have anything to do with that ‘small animal’, would it?”

“Nah, no…” the corners of his lips twitch. Naruto taps his finger against the counter. “That huntress wasn’t just any huntress. It was Goodwitch. As in Professor Goodwitch, from Beacon. And after I got away from her… who do I run into at a bar but Ozpin himself.”

“Ozpin?” Junior furrows his brow. “Wait… are you telling me-“

“Yup,” Naruto sighs. “Bought me a bowl of ramen too.”

“Well, what’d you say?”

“What do you think I said? I told him I’d think about it.”

“And by think about it, you mean you’re going to _actually_ think about it and not have some knee jerk reaction and do something stupid like running off to Mistral?”

Averting his eyes, Naruto pokes at the counter and mumbles, “Well not _Mistral_ … everyone goes to Mistral when they’re trying to disappear…”

Junior brings a hand to his forehead. A sigh. He shakes his head, stands, paces for a bit and turns back to look at the white-haired boy.  “What is it? Just what’s got you so freaked out that you’re acting so stupid? Is it the eye?”

“What do you mean stupid-?”

“Do you just not want to go back to school? That it? Cause I hope you do realize you’re about to piss away a once in a lifetime chance, here.”

“Once in a lifetime my dick,” Naruto scowls. “Come on, there’s no way Ozpin really wants someone like me at Beacon. How do you know he’s not just trying to put me six feet under like every other damned hunter I’ve met?”

“Because we both know if he was, you never would have walked out of that bar.”

“We’re in the center of a city. There’s no way he’d risk fighting me here, no matter how tired I was from fighting Goodwitch.”

“And you think he’d be willing to do it at Beacon? With all of those kids and students around? What? You think he’s going to come at you with an army of kids who can’t even legally buy alcohol? Call me crazy, but I don’t think Ozpin of all people would want to repeat the same mistake Ironwood did. No, I don’t think that. I know that. He knows that, and _you_ know that too.”

His jaw clenches. Naruto balls his hand into a fist, the memories of that day coming back in flashes of crimson and violence, dying his left eye in a bloody red. His head throbs with a dull ache, from his sleep-deprived brain, from his ruined, right eye, and from the anger and indignation lancing through his mind like fire.

The crimson eye narrows at the man. “Choose your next words carefully, Xiong.”

For a moment, the man seems to wither beneath his glare. Then, Junior swallows, squares his jaw and takes a step towards the crimson-eyed boy.

“That’s not why you don’t want to go to Beacon. You don’t want to go because you’re _scared_.”

“Scared?” Naruto gives the man a baffled look, getting to his feet. “The hell do I have to be scared of?”

“A bunch of children?” he asks, raising his left hand.

Then, he holds up his right. “A couple of seniors? The professors? Those washed up hunters who do nothing but grade papers all day?  There isn’t a single person at that school I couldn’t wipe the floor with in a real fight!”

**_“Then why are you trying to run away?”_ **

The question and its answer hits him like a tankard filled with ice water. He can almost hear a rush of air as that fire goes out and all of the anger drains out of him in an instant. And in its place, it leaves nothing but ash and cold and a long-held shame and regret.

“Because I…” his head lowers, even the crimson in his eye fading back to an ashen blue. A twitch. “I…”

_“You are the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox!”_

_“You are… and always will be… Uzumaki Naruto! Never forget that!”_

Naruto falls back into the seat as the faint memory of two voices echo in his mind. It’s been so long, so long that he can hardly even remember the particularities of their faces or the intonations of their voices. Time has long reduced such details to ash. All that remains are the words and the emotions that flutter in his heart at their remembrance.

_-because the last time I trusted someone like that, I lost everything._

Those are the words hanging on the tip of his tongue, kept in place only by a potent mixture of pride and stubbornness.

A hand falls on his shoulder.

“Look,” Junior says. “I know you’ve got your problems. Like seriously. A week tops and anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell that you’ve got some serious issues. Honestly, it is very concerning. People like me tend to be the first to die when people like you flip their shit.”

Naruto perks a brow. “Is this supposed to be reassuring?”

“I’m getting to that,” the man says without the slightest change in expression. “The point is… I know you have your reasons for not wanting to go. Every time you come in here, you’re missing an arm, a leg, your skin, an eye. I know the reason you don’t want to go sure as hell isn’t just as simple as you being weary of Ozpin. But… even if you don’t trust Ozpin, even if you think huntsmen are lame, even if you just don’t want to sit in a classroom and listen to someone lecture at you for hours on end… don’t you think it’s worth it?”

“To get away from this same old part you always have to play, of the bad guy, of the monster and the villain… to see what the other side is like, even for a little? Don’t you want to remember what life is like without that stupid mask?”

“And even if it doesn’t work out…” Junior squeezes his shoulder, giving him a tiny smile, one so small it is almost hidden under that beard of his. “Well, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll treat you to some ramen. How about that?”

A moment passes and Naruto says nothing. Junior gives his shoulder a shake.

“Come on… just think about it. You’ll be able to see all kinds of semblances from all over the world while they’re _not_ trying to kill you… and Goodwitch would have to see you. Every. Single. Day.”

With each word, the corners of the boy’s lips begin to twitch upward until finally, finally he cracks a small smile.

“You’re trying really hard here, aren’t you?”

“Again. You flip your shit? Like, 90% chance I’m one of the first to die. And there’s a significantly less chance of that happening if you go to one of those schools. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I’m looking out for my own skin.”

A sigh. Naruto stares at nothing for a moment, that little smile stuck on his face. And then-

“I guess… I do kind of want to see that girl’s semblance up close.”

Junior smirks. Claps him on the back. “Make sure you get a couple of good shots in for me and the twins.”

“Right,” Naruto snorts. He closes his eye, leaning back against the bar. “Thanks, Junior.”

Junior makes a face.

“Junior? What happened to Xiong?”

“As if. ‘Hei Xiong’ is way too cool a name for a guy who’s basically a boss mook like you. Junior’s a much better fit.”

“This coming from the guy named after ramen.”

“This coming from the guy named after ramen who could kick your ass with both arms tied behind his back.”

“This coming from the angst-y brat who needed a dare-to-be-badass speech from a ‘boss mook’.”

“This coming from the guy who just admitted he’s a boss mook.”

“This coming from-“

This goes on for some time.

* * *

**AN: This chapter. Too angsty? Not angsty enough? I’m leaning a bit more towards the first to be honest.**

**So, next week I might take a break. Generally, my plan for releasing chapters is, I am going to do weekly releases to finish an ‘arc’, and then take a break to prepare for the next one. In this case, I already have a lot of the next arc pre-written so right now I’m debating on whether or not to take that break.**

 


	6. Chapter 6

_“Ms. Schnee, we will be arriving at Beacon Academy shortly. I do hope your flight was enjoyable.”_

It was.

She steps off her father’s private aircraft, the pilot going around back to unload her luggage. The whole of Beacon Academy stands before her, the lush viridian of Vale warm and welcoming compared to the harsh whites and grays of home.

No. That’s not quite right. For now and for the next four years, _this_ is her home.

Oh, it was a chore convincing father to allow her to attend a huntsman academy outside of Atlas. She has the scar to show for it. But now, now she’s _finally_ slipped out from under his thumb. And she couldn’t be happier about it.

The streets and courtyard are empty. Of course. She _did_ arrive just early enough to avoid the rest of the rabble. There is no doubt in her mind there will be some sort of initiation test to weed out the rest of the masses, a test she will pass _flawlessly_. To others, to the incapable and ill-prepared, it may be the final test, the last daunting hurdle they must overcome to enter the gates of the shining Beacon. For her? Nothing more than yet another stepping stone on the path to her future.

The _biggest_ hurdle for her is long behind her, still in Atlas, probably stewing in his office with a glass of scotch. Just imagining the look on his face is enough to bring a beautiful smile to her lips.

Truly, there is nothing in the world that could possibly spoil her mood. And as the help fetches her things, she takes a moment to gaze upon the new world set before her.

It is a beautiful day outside.

The sun is shining.

Birds are singing. Flowers are blooming. Some guy is passed out under a tree.

On days like these-

 _“Excuse me?!”_ she all but shrieks, channeling a truly monumental amount of contempt into only two, short words. “Do you know where you are?!”

No response. Wrinkling her lips into a dainty frown, she advances on whoever it is who would have the _audacity_ to fall asleep in front of an establishment of such prestige and nobility as Beacon.

A head of white hair comes into view, a messy mop of faded gray, almost like ash. Not at all like the finely groomed, pure white snow of her and her sister. His orange and black tracksuit is wrinkled, covered in a thin film of filth. Almost as if to put the finishing touches on the image of ‘complete bum’, a cheap knapsack sits at his side, his legs strewn out over the grass.

And last, but not least, three whisker marks line both his cheeks.

A faunus.

Her frown twists into a full-blown scowl.

And that scowl dials back to a puzzled frown as she gets close enough to get a good look at him.

It is a faunus. A young faunus, maybe a year or two younger than her. But…

She crouches before him, putting her face as close to his as she dares, narrowing her eyes to make sure they aren’t playing tricks on her.

… Is it a faunus?

As she gets closer, those ‘whiskers’ begin to look less like actual whiskers and more like someone took a pen and drew three lines over both his cheeks. As she gets closer, she notices the faint scar over his right eye, one almost a mirror of her own. And as she gets closer, she notices the rapid twitching behind his eyelids, the slight grimace and clenched jaw.

It might not be a faunus. But it is someone having a nightmare.

She should wake him. If not just because this is most certainly _not_ the place to be napping, then for his own sake as well.

“Hey-“

She reaches for his shoulder. Wrinkles her nose, fingers stopping just short of his filthy tracksuit. It is not exactly covered in grime, but it wouldn’t surprise her if he had simply sat down here the day before and slept through the entire night. Searching for somewhere to nudge him awake, her eyes are inevitably drawn to those strange markings on his cheeks.

… It’s fine, right?

There are no unacceptable or unreasonable motivations behind it. His clothes really are just _filthy_ and it would be even more wrong for her to simply kick him awake. After all, he is having a nightmare. So she has to wake him up somehow. So it’s fine.

It’s fine, isn’t it?

There is no one to the left. No one to the right. Her father’s butlers are still unloading her luggage. She reaches out, curiosity and a strange sense of familiarity drawing her hand not to his shoulder or his arm, but to his cheek, to those strange ‘whiskers but not whiskers’.

His skin is soft and warm. His cheek is smooth, her thumb tracing the topmost whisker on the right side. The effect is instantaneous. The grimace vanishes, the shaking stops, and the white-haired boy seems almost to relax into her hand.

 _‘They’re like birthmarks…’_ she realizes as she continues to stroke the marks on the boy’s cheeks, as though in a trance.

Up close, they are rather cute.

“Nyaa…”

“What are you doing?”

“WAH!!!”

With a shriek, she falls on her rear. The boy awakens with a yawn. His eyes are a striking shade of blue, still foggy with the haze of sleep. The right is a few shades lighter than the left, a faded cobalt that seems almost to not reflect light. Those mismatched eyes regard her and blink, one eye not quite closing and opening as fast as the other, their gaze dropping ever so slightly.

“Mmm… white frills?”

It takes two seconds. One to get over her shock. Two to follow his line of sight. Her face going flush with anger, she pushes down her skirt.

“Where do you think you are looking, you degenerate lecher?!” she all but screams.

The deviant perks a brow. “I’m not the one going up to people while they’re sleeping and stroking their faces. And then flashing them, apparently.”

Wrath turns to embarrassment. Embarrassment doubles right back to wrath. She opens her mouth to retort, only for a string of half-formed words and angry noises to spill from her lips.

“Anyway, I’ve got some stuff to take care of before the rest of the kiddies gets here,” the unappreciative, unintelligent, lazy, dirty, perverted, no-good, scruffy-looking, _not-cute-AT-ALL_ scoundrel gets to his feet, throwing his knapsack over his shoulder. He makes a strange shape with his right hand, his left eye flashing gold.

“See ya around, flasher-chan.”

With that, he vanishes in a swirl of embers.

Her expression goes blank. She stares, eyes fixed on the spot where _he_ once stood. Rage bubbles up within her, filling to the point of breaking, like an overflowed chalice, bubbling and churning and thrashing, her metaphorical lid kept chained in place only by the cold indifference of her self-control. But with the target of her grievances gone, alone with no one around but the help, there is nowhere for it to go but up and out.

Fire and fury melt the chains. The whole of her anger erupting out of her, Weiss Schnee throws up her arms and lets out a scream.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!!!!”  


* * *

 

  
Of Heroes and Monsters

Welcome to Beacon(I)

Chapter 6: First Impressions  


* * *

 

  
“You have got to be kidding me.”

They step out of the airship side by side, as close as family, as different as the moon and the sun. One is small and cute, a face he is, unfortunately, already familiar with. The other…

An orange scarf wraps around her neck. Her hair is like fire, a free-flowing stream of golden blond reaching all the way down to her waist. Her eyes are a soft purple, the only odd color out in her ensemble of yellow and brown. Her skin is pale, the same shade as that of the silver-eyed child gawking at other people’s weapons beside her.

Seriously. Why is that girl even here? Isn’t she, like, twelve?

“So that’s a Yang, huh…?”

Yep. Definitely _not_ a guy. Even if he wasn’t half blind out of his right eye, that outfit of hers does little to hide a combination of curves and muscles that’d make any man putty in her hands.

He sits in a tree, all but hidden beneath the leaves and branches as he lounges on a particularly large branch. Totally _not_ ogling wolfie’s hot sister, the clone of Uzumaki Naruto tilts his head and ponders his next move.

“This feels a bit too contrived to be a coincidence…”

He could understand if she had busted up Junior’s nightclub as revenge for him taking her little sister’s scythe. But, that had happened before the night when he had first met the silver-eyed pain. That they not only know each other, but are apparently related? That sets off just about every alarm his paranoid brain has to offer. For a moment, he regards the little girl in the red hood, wondering if he had been set up, wondering if this was all just an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Ozpin.

Then, the girl proceeds to go googly eyed at the sight of some dude’s flaming sword. And the thought is promptly banished from his mind in its entirety.

…

Really. Did she just come here to see her sister off or something? There’s no way she’s actually going to be in the same class as him, right?

“So, let’s see,” Naruto scratches his cheek. He watches as the girl reaches behind her to take out a weapon, what appears to be a retracted, silver greatsword with a red handle and a clockwork at its crossguard.

He watches as the girl appears to visibly wilt, putting on a rather weak smile as she regards the new weapon with nowhere near the enthusiasm she had when he complimented the sniper-scythe she had back then.

“Beat up the hot sister… and give wolfie her sniper-scythe back to her,” he identifies his two objectives. “Now, question is, how am I going to do both of those things without her realizing it’s me?”

It’d be annoying if wolfie recognized him for whatever reason and had a freak out in the middle of the courtyard. He needs to separate them. Somehow.

His original target then proceeds to rush off with a gaggle of faceless friends, the sheer force with which she was just ditched causing the poor girl to spin like a top.

“Huh, guess that solves that problem.”

The clone gets to his feet, preparing to make his appearance. And no sooner does a certain heiress come into view, her butlers pushing a trolley of suitcases.

A frown crosses his lips.

_“Avoid Weiss Schnee at all costs.”_

That was the order his creator had given him. He understands why, even as a clone. And as much as he’d like to throw caution to the wind and get this over with all at once, like ripping off a Band-Aid, the potential consequences if things go wrong are far worse than some little girl being angry he took her scythe.

He crosses his arms and prepares to dispel, only to notice something below him. A girl in the courtyard, regarding the Schnee heiress from behind a book. Her outfit is a mix and match of white with mostly black. Her skin is fair, sharp features with a light purple eyeshadow set in an uncaring mask to hide the thinly veiled contempt in her yellow eyes.

Finally, a large, black ribbon sits atop of head of silken black hair, tied into a bow. From his vantage point above, there are two cat ears just visible through the black cloth.

Naruto perks a brow.

“White Fang…?”

It may be a little racist for the first thought to pop into his mind the moment he sees a faunus hiding their animal traits to be ‘White Fang’. Perhaps she just doesn’t want the extra attention. Maybe it’s her own way of going in disguise. He’s sure he could pass for someone else if he just hid his whisker marks. But, regardless of her reason for hiding her ears, considering what happened the _last time_ he ran into a faunus trying to pass themselves off as human, it couldn’t hurt to err on the side of caution.

Especially since _she_ is here.

The only question is how he is going to check.

He doubts he’ll get a straight answer if he directly asks her to her face. Especially if her motivations are less than noble. Maybe if he tricks her… the only question is how…

The clone blinks, snapping his fingers.

“That’s it!”

* * *

She suppresses a sigh as the crowd shuffles past her. The tension drains from her shoulders. There was only ever a faint expectation of something going wrong, but she had to be prepared for it, nevertheless.

Things have been going smoothly. Almost too smoothly, in fact. She passed the practical exam without much trouble. Selling the shipment of dust had secured her enough money to pay for tuition. And the ribbon seems to be doing its job of hiding her faunus traits more than well enough, if the fact that the few gazing eyes she had caught seemed more interested in checking her out rather than seeing just what is hidden beneath the big bow atop her head is any indication.

Everything appears to be going according to plan. It is lucky enough, Blake Belladonna supposes. She’d heard the rumors of what happened to certain faunus who had decided to part ways with the White Fang… and thankfully, those rumors appear to be just that. Rumors.

Blake digs her book out from her pocket, intent on catching up on some reading when she sees a glimpse of white out of the corner of her eye. There is a light crash, one she only catches thanks to her enhanced hearing. And what follows is a voice that can only be described as the quintessential whine of a spoiled rich girl.

“What are you _doing_?!”

And there it is. Something wrong. A potential road bump in her admittedly, cobbled together plan of running away from the White Fang to attend a huntsmen academy.

A Schnee.

And not just any Schnee. Weiss Schnee. Perhaps the only one of her family absolutely justified in her hatred and disgust of the faunus.

She’d heard about the infamous kidnapping incident that took place almost three years prior. She herself hadn’t participated, but Adam had, and when he returned he pointedly refused to discuss with her any of the details.

It was the incident that had catapulted the one known to the world as the Demon Fox to national infamy. And the one that had marked the beginnings of Adam’s own downward spiral into the person he is today. Here, so close she can even hear the Schnee’s voice as she drowns the poor, little girl in the red hood in all of the outrage and fury a snooty aristocrat can muster, she can’t help but wonder what exactly happened that day. And she can’t help but wonder if maybe she had gone with him, then-

“Hi there, kitty cat.”

It comes from behind her. A voice that shouldn’t be here, one that sends fear and shame shooting through her mind. She whirls around, hoping against hope that it is some mistake, but no.

There he is, as if summoned by her bittersweet musings. Adam Taurus stands before her, his lips pulled into an unreadable frown, his eyes and upper face hidden beneath a crimson-marked face mask.

She drops her book. Her eyes go wide. Blake takes a step back. “Adam… what… what are you doing here?!”

“That’s _my_ line,” he takes a step forward. “What are _you_ doing _here_?”

“I-“ she swallows the lump of guilt and fear in her throat. Shakes her head. “I won’t go back. I won’t! What the White Fang are doing now… it’s wrong. You… the White Fang… you’ve all gone down a road I can’t follow, and-“

Then ‘Adam’ smirks in a very distinctly un-Adam-like way and shrugs his shoulders. “Kay.”

A pop. Smoke erupts around the not-Adam and when it clears, in his place is a white-haired boy with a faint scar over his right eye and three whisker-marks over both his cheeks.

Blake blinks. Rubs her eyes. She blinks again and stares, her brain unable to process just how Adam has turned into this small boy.

“So, I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but let’s get the big ones out of the way,” the boy chirps, folding his arms and giving her a friendly smile. “What? Transformation. How? Met Adam a few years ago, we worked together on a mission, had a falling out, he cut me like a banana. Why? Well, call me a paranoid little shit because I probably am, but a faunus in disguise glowering at _that_ Schnee in particular doesn’t exactly paint the best picture.”

“… Well, you aren’t wrong…” she sighs. She brings a hand to her head, trying to regain her bearings.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She snaps. Perhaps a bit too harshly. He throws his hands up as if surrendering and shrugs.

“Sooo~…” he perks a brow. “White Fang?”

“ _Ex-_ White Fang,” Blake corrects with a frown, again unable to keep the bite out of her voice. She takes a breath and lets out another sigh. He’s not wrong, she tells herself again. It really would have been all too easy for an outsider to draw the wrong conclusion, and the boy looks like he is probably a year or two younger than her, so she really shouldn’t be getting so upset _but did he really have to turn into **him** of all people_?

“Oh.” the boy perks up. He takes a moment to process this information, to check and confirm that it does match up with her reaction from earlier. “Cool.”

He picks up her fallen book. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to check. Sorry about the whole ‘jump-scare’ thing. Later.”

“Wait, who-?”

Before she can stop him, he tosses the book to her and a second pop echoes through the air. Again, the person before her erupts into smoke. But this time, when the smoke clears, there is no one standing in the place of the boy, leaving her alone in the courtyard.

And on cue, a small explosion comes from behind her. A jar of red dust sails through the air, clatters to the ground and rolls, stopping when it hits the side of her foot. Kneeling to pick up the jar, Blake looks to the snow-flake printed onto its surface and looks back to the spot where the white-haired boy once stood.

The boy who could replicate Adam’s appearance and voice so closely that even she had been fooled. The boy who managed to get behind her, without her even noticing.

The boy who now not only knows she is a faunus, but also that she used to be one of the White Fang.

“… Who are you?”

Only silence answers her.

And the sound of distant yelling. Blake turns to find the girl in the red hood wilting beneath the angry, yelling heiress. A sigh escapes her lips.

She… looks like she could use some help.  


* * *

 

_At the same time…_

* * *

 

Yang Xaio Long is no stranger to a fight.

After all, her dad _is_ a combat instructor at one of the best prep schools in Vale and as much as she and her little sister always begged him not to, the lectures sometimes didn’t end even after they went home. So whenever Ruby would run off to train with their uncle, she was always the one left to bear the brunt of her dad’s ‘teacher-ness’.

Long story short, the eldest daughter of the Xaio Long household knows her way around a fight. And one lesion she always took to heart was to aim for the soft spots.

Upper arms. Collarbone. Windpipe. Temple. Diaphragm. Ribs. Thighs. Groin.

Especially that last one.

The phrase ‘grab them by the balls’ comes to mind. Such a vulnerable pair of targets, it’s always the quickest way to get a guy to bend over, both figuratively _and_ literally. Who can blame her for taking advantage of such a big weakness?

After all, there’s a reason they make cups. But most guys don’t go around all day wearing protection downstairs. So getting a good chokehold on the boys is always a good way to get most guys to stop thinking with their lower head and start thinking with their upper one.

_“Oh hey, you got a hair sticking out-“_

Case in point. The little, whiskered boy who just ripped out a strand of her precious hair. Sure she’s pissed. But the kid looks like he’s the same age as her little sister, so it’s not like she can just clock him and call it a day. So, give him a good squeeze to show him what happens when he messes with the grownups and send him on his way.

Except that’s not what happened.

Yang looks to her right hand, held back inches from the boy’s family jewels by his left hand.

She looks to her left hand, the hand currently wrapped around the boy’s wrist, his own right grab firmly grasping her left boob.

She gives it a tug. His hand fails to budge.

“What’re you doing?” she asks with a raised brow. His response may or may not decide whether he still gets that squeeze or a swift knee between the legs.

“Uh…” the boy begins, his eyes fixated on her chest. “Well, you went for my boys and since turnabout is fair play and all that, I figured I’d go for your girls...”

That gets a smirk and half of a chuckle out of her. “Fair enough. But my eyes are up here.”

“Yeah… just… one second…” His cheek twitches. His lips press into a thin line. His brow furrows as he strains to lift his eyes. To his credit, the boy appears to actually be trying to tear his eyes away from her boobs, for what she can only guess is a combination of teen-boy hormones and the sensation in his right hand to keep his eyes rooted firmly in her cleavage.

His eyes inch upward. And they fall back down. And upward again. And back down.

“Ugh… it’s like they have their own center of gravity…”

“Want me to get you a stepladder?”

That manages to do it. His face goes blank. His eyes rise upward to meet her own, his mismatched blues narrowing in a glare. The grip around her wrist tighten as a smirk stretches across his whiskered cheeks.

“Thanks, but I think I’m good. After all, this is just the perfect height to _kick your ass_.”

Aw, how cute. “Big words for such a little man.”

“I’d say the results speak for themselves,” he gives her boob a squeeze. “Bit slow on the draw there, eh _cowgirl_?”

Her semblance rumbles to life, budding embers painting her eyes a fiery crimson. “You looking for a fight, _whiskers_?”

“Bit slow on the uptake too.”

Okay. Kid’s going down.

She wasn’t exactly _planning_ to get into a fight first day at Beacon. Especially not with some kid who looks two years young to be here. But, if the strength behind the grip on her wrist is any indication, this kid isn’t just visiting. This strength is telling her he’s part of this coming year’s class, along with her and her baby sister.

This strength is telling her that this is going to be _good_.

Yang tightens her grip and the grip on her is tightened in turn. She pushes against him, testing that strength and finding it a match for her own, the two of them inching closer and closer together as their grins grow wider, hungrier, the distance between them becoming mere inches, mostly constituted of the height difference between them. He may be shorter than her, but he is taller than her sister and right now, his face is so close to hers that she can faintly smell his breath.

It smells like ramen.

Faintly, a part of her wonders just what her breath smells like to him. And that thought is interrupted as she feels his hand shift, the thumb and index finger of his right hand finding a certain nub through her clothing, pinching it between them.

His expression goes blank, eyes narrowing.

“Junior sends his regards.”

Those words cut through the anger and excitement clouding her thoughts. For a moment, Yang Xaio Long stares at the younger boy in shock.

And in that moment, he squeezes.

 **“YEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOO-“**  
  


* * *

 

**  
“-OOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!”**

“Oh my. That’s the second one today.”

“… This is _his_ doing.”

“Now Glynda, I understand the two of you have some history, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume Naruto is the c-“

**“YOU’RE _DEAD_ , WHISKERS!!!!”**

“-is doing all this without cause. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Glynda gives him a dry stare. Ozpin takes a sip from his mug as the students begin to filter into the auditorium, some backtracking to find the source of the angry yell, others hurrying into the building to seek refuge from it.

“… You know why this is necessary.”

“That child is a menace and a danger to all of those around him.”

“But he is still a child,” the headmaster says, staring somewhat blankly into his mug. “It is the nature of children to seek guidance. And when they do, they _will_ find it.”

“It is only a question of when… and _from who_.” 

* * *

 

  
He sprints to somewhere amidst the sprawling streets and buildings of Beacon Academy, the fiery blond hot on his metaphorical tail. Step one of his plan is complete, namely pissing her off and getting her attention. Now all that’s left is to lead her somewhere where he can proceed to knock her around for a bit until she lets loose with that semblance of hers. That’s the whole reason he tracked her down, after all. He could care less that she beat up Junior and the twins and trashed the club. All he really cares about is seeing her semblance in action up close.

Really.

Even if he doesn’t use his tails and just sticks to hand-to-hand and a little bit of wind manipulation, it’ll be annoying to fight in front of a crowd. So many people mean so many more chances someone might connect the dots and piece together his identity. It’d be best if they fought in a secluded place, with no one around to see. That is what the S-rank mercenary tells himself as he flees from the angry huntress-trainee.

“Quit running away!”

“Quit trying to punch me in the balls!”

“What’s wrong, whiskers?! I thought turnabout was fair play!”

“I _pinched_ your nipple! I did not try to _pulverize_ your boobs!!!”

It’s not because he absolutely does not want to find out whether or not he can regenerate critical damage to _down there_.

Nope.

Not at all.

The street comes to an end. The side of a building looms before him. His left eye flickers with gold, a thin layer of aura covering the soles of his feet and the palm of his hand as he runs at the wall in a dead sprint. He slams the hand against the wall, clinging to the surface with aura as he throws himself upward and cartwheels onto the wall, his sandals sticking to the vertical surface like it is flat ground as he runs straight up the side of the building.

There are two cracks behind him, the simultaneous firing of pair of dust rounds. He turns, expecting to see a pair of bullets whizzing through the air at him.

Instead, what he finds is a missile of burning gold, her fist pulled back with a promise of pain and retribution in her crimson eyes.

A quick burst of wind propels him upward. She plows into the wall, reinforced cement and stone shattering into rubble. Naruto lets out a sigh. He looks to the smoking hole in the wall with a dry expression.

“The witch is going to blame me for that…” he notes. “Well, at least I should be safe up he-“

And the fiery blond bursts out of the smoke, charging up the wall as if it is flat ground.

His eyes widen. He just manages to dodge the right hook, ducking under a jab and blocking a wide swing. A hard punch finds his ribs. Naruto winces. He staggers. She draws back a fist, winding up for a knockout.

Too slow.

He raises his arm, drops his shoulder back and balls his hand into a fist. A step. The punch flies past his cheek. He throws his weight into a simple, unenhanced punch, one still strong enough to down a grown man through raw muscle power alone.

His fist connects with her cheek. Her head jerks back, golden locks fluttering out behind her. With his fist still pressed into her cheek, the girl rotates her head back around. Gives him a lopsided grin.

And her fist slams into his face, propelling him the rest of the way up the wall and into the open air. He flips once, twice and falls in an arc, crashing onto the rooftop, opting to just lay there and let his healing factor work on the pain in his ribs and skull.

“Ugh… what crazy strength…”

A part of him is telling him to end it now. Don’t play around. Take her down in one quick strike before she can charge up that semblance of hers. It is a cold, dark and sharp part of himself, one honed from everything he’s learned in the six, nearly seven, years since he first left the great walls of his home village for the outside world of Remnant. It is the part that definitely isn’t angry and wanting payback for Junior, Melanie and Miltia, the lingering embers of the rage he had felt when he first came across the ruined nightclub, the voice whispering _what if this one wields the same power as the one who took your eye, what reason do you have to not snuff out that puny flame of hers in return?_

It is, thankfully, drowned out by a combination of ‘Junior’s a bit of a shit so he probably deserved it’, ‘so what if she does’, and ‘those boobs’.

“Oh crap, didn’t feel any aura there... Hey whisker! You okay up there?”

Another voice, this one not in his head, calls out to him from over the ledge. Its owner leaps onto the roof, her eyes returned to a soft purple and her anger seemingly appeased by the application of her fist to his face. “Didn’t hit you too hard back there, did I?”

“I’m good,” Naruto sits up, rubbing his face. He hops to his feet. “You caught me off guard. Didn’t know you guys in the Kingdoms learned how to manipulate your aura outside of Mistral.”

“Yeah, well, dad’s a teacher at Signal,” she explains, flipping her hair. “Apparently he learned it from some ninjas he knew in his heyday. He’s been pushing to get it added to the standard curriculum but it’s pretty hard stuff and no one wants to get an F trying to learn how to walk up walls.”

“Is that right?”

She puts her hands on her hips. Tilts her head, giving him an appraising look. “You know, you don’t seem all that mad about me trashing Junior’s club.”

Patting his ribs, Naruto shrugs. “Meh. Considering what I did when I first came around, it’d be kind of hypocritical for me to be angry at you for doing what you did. Besides, it’s not like they’re dead or anything... I’ve just got some time to kill before the opening assembly and heard you were in the area, so here I am.”

She perks a brow. Quirks her lips as she processes this new bit of info. “Junior didn’t send you?”

“He’s the one who told me about you but no.”

“So you’re actually, like, a student here?”

“That’s the plan, at least.”

“Hm. Cool.” She regards him with a smile, tilting her head. “Well then, not that I don’t enjoy a good fight, but if you aren’t here to get payback for Junior, then why _did_ you come after little, ol’ me?”

She asks this, wearing an all too fake expression of air-headed innocence. As if she knows full well the reason why he or any other guy would approach her.

“Your semblance.”

Her eyebrows shoot up in response to his answer.

“I want to see your semblance,” Naruto explains, his hands clenched into fist and an almost childish spark of excitement in his eyes. Then, he closes his eyes, turns his palms upwards and shrugs. “It just so happens that seeing it apparently involves smacking you around for a bit, so I figured why not get some justice for Junior’s juniors while I’m at it.”

“His _juniors_ , huh?” she chuckles, apparently approving of the stupid pun. She crosses her arms. Shifts her weight from one foot to the other, looking the boy over, not quite sure what to make of him. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a guy come up to me _wanting_ to see my semblance. That’s usually about the point when they run for the hills. Junior tell you my name?”

“Nope.”

“Well then, I better introduce myself,” she smirks, gives him a wink as she raises her arms and takes a modified boxer’s stance, fists held forward with her knees slightly bent. “Yang Xaio Long. Hope you don’t expect me to go easy on you.”

“I’m the-eh, erm,” he catches himself with a cough, bringing his hand up to cover his mouth. “I’m… Naruto.”

The name is almost unfamiliar as it rolls off his tongue.  

“Naruto Uzumaki.”

The name is almost unfamiliar. But just saying it is enough to bring a small smile to his face.

His left eye sparks, blue igniting into gold. Naruto lowers his arm and returns her smirk with one of his own.

“And I hope you don’t expect me to _let you_.”

The sun shines overhead. A warm breeze rolls over the rooftops. A tiny shadow circles above, a single black feather falling through the air, rocking back and forth as it lands between them.

A sharp crack. The tiles shatter beneath her feet and she dashes forward, a fist cocked back. The punch flies. It is weaker, slower than the one that had thrown him up onto the rooftop, all too easy for Naruto to leap over it, grabbing her wrist as he flips over her, yanking her arm back and spinning mid-air as he pulls her off her feet and throws her downward.

She hits the rooftop with a grunt. A blast of wind smashes into her, sending her tumbling towards the ledge. Yang rolls into a crouch, slamming a hand onto the roof to stop her momentum. Her boots skid to a stop inches from the end of the roof. Her head snaps backs up to stare at him, her features blank with shock.

Then, the smirk comes back as a hungry grin, her eyes flashing crimson.

Her fists slam together, the bracelets around her wrists unfolding into a pair of yellow arm guards, plates covering the back of her hands and her forearms, two silver barrels poking out in the narrow space between her hand and the armoring. She throws her arms back. A flash and a loud bang come from each of the gauntlets. The recoil hurls her forward and she leaps across the rooftop, rushing at him with a series of kicks and punches.

He manages to avoid the initial flurry of punches, blocking and ducking and weaving, feeling each blocked hit even through his reinforcement. Two punches catch him across the chest. Naruto slips under the third, his fist meeting her ribs with a burst of wind. He ducks under a hook, spinning around and slamming his elbow into her side.

She staggers back. He plants his foot into her stomach, snaps the same leg up to catch her on the chin and leaps forward, spinning and bringing his other leg around in a roundhouse kick.

Yang catches his leg, traps it under her arm and draws her fist back. At the same time, Naruto raises his arm, wind gathering around his hand, his fingers held flat like the edge of a knife.

And in that instant, they both freeze, looking to each other with wide eyes and blank expressions. As if just daring the other to make the first move. There is a moment as they both simply stare at one another, neither saying anything, neither moving an inch.

“Sooo…” Yang breaks the silence first, her fist still raised. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the thing wind is best at is… cutting, isn’t it?”

“… It is.” Naruto says simply, wind still swirling in his palm. His eyes shift to her flowing, golden locks. “I know I kind of yanked out a strand to piss you off, but you’ve got some really pretty hair.”

“Thanks.”

_No punchy between the legs. No cut-y with the wind._

They reach a mutual understanding. A nonverbal agreement passes between them. Another beat passes in silence.

And Yang slams her fist into his thigh.

“Nh-!“

Naruto winces. She shoves him away and he stumbles back, pain and numbness racing up and down his leg. A storm of punches chases after him and he is forced to block, backpedaling on a half numb leg. A quick jab manages to slip past his defense, nailing him on the nose. It opens the way for a hard hit to the stomach and a round of punches to the chest. He catches one, kicking her back and flipping backwards to put some distance between them. He lands in a crouch, bringing his arm back with his hand held open like a claw, air compressing into his palm.

He thrusts the hand forward. A blast of wind rips across the rooftop. She plants her feet, draws back her arm and-

“HA-!”

-meets the blast with a punch, the compressed wind breaking and curving about her fist, stripping the tiles from the rooftop around her but leaving her and the tiles behind her completely untouched.

Naruto stares, his eyes wide and unblinking.

Yang gives him a grin, lowering her smoking fist.

“Come on whiskers, you want to see my semblance, you’re going to have to do better than that!”

Naruto says nothing, staring in silence at the huntress in training. Then, slowly, his hand closes into a fist. And he returns her grin, wind and aura gathering into his feet.

A hollow clap. A burst of speed. He closes the distance between them in a single step, his fist cocked back.

To Yang, it is as if he had vanished and rematerialized in front of her. Her eyes widen.

They both throw a punch at the same time. Their fists meet. And a storm of force explodes outwards from his fist, blowing her back, her boots carving two trenches into the rooftop as she skids backwards.

Another hollow ‘whomp’ comes from in front of her. He vanishes again. Where there was once a white-haired boy with whisker marks on his cheeks, there is now only a trail of flittering embers, those embers leading right behind her. She turns, immediately throwing her arms up in a guard. A kick comes smashing into her, erupting with another shockwave that throws her off her feet, sending her tumbling across the rooftop.

A shadow falls over her. Aura flows into her hand. She slams a palm into the roof, the aura anchoring her and bringing her to a sudden stop, the shadow falling past her, Naruto dropping his foot into and through the tiling.

The broken tiles trap his foot. The aura securing her grip disperses. Her gauntlet fires a burst downward. The momentum swings her upwards, back onto her feet and she fires a second round, rising into a spinning kick. He ducks under her leg. Frees his foot with a burst of air and flips back away from a heel drop, rolling into a crouch.

Yang takes up her stance. Naruto leaps at her. Fists and elbows fly as their arms blur together, blocking and dodging and searching for any opening they can find, neither willing to give an inch, both fighters using their aura to anchor themselves in place. She jams her knuckles into his bicep. He catches her across the cheek. Her fist slams into his ribs. He drives a knee into her stomach. They trade blow after blow, her aura absorbing the brunt of the damage and a combination of reinforcement and his rapid healing keeping him on his feet.

She matches his speed with her technique. He matches her strength with his wind. The rooftop trembles beneath them, the tiles popping out of place, shattering into pieces as the shockwaves from their fists sweep them away, the air around the two beginning to spark and flicker.

He slips around a punch, slamming his fist into her face with enough force to crack the tiles beneath their feet. Her head snaps back and her upper body follows. She begins to fall back and, for a moment, Naruto worries he may have put too much strength into that last punch.

And that worry is promptly discarded as she catches herself, swinging back around with a hook that rattles his teeth and sends a shiver cresting through the rooftop tiles.

He falls back a step. Yang lunges forward with her right arm pulled all the way back. Her hair trails behind her, golden threads beginning to glow white with light. Naruto digs his heel into the rooftop, drawing his own right arm back, wind swirling over his hand.

Both teenagers slam their fists into the other’s stomach, the force echoing outward, transferring downward through their aura, through their feet and into the rooftop, shards of broken tile bouncing into the air as the entire building shutters and groans. Her legs buckle. His do as well. She swings her left arm around to grab the back of his right shoulder as she begins to collapse and he does the same, the two of them half hugging, half leaning on each other with their knuckles buried in the other’s gut.

“That’s more like it,” Yang half whispers, half pants, into his ear. “You were holding out on me, whiskers.”

“’Course.” Naruto smirks, the only strain in his voice that from the fist pressed into his stomach. “Had to let you get warmed up first. Even an idiot knows a flame will go out if you blow on it too hard.”

“Oh? Guess you haven’t been _blowing_ very hard then.”

“That was a terrible pun,” he chuckles. “But you aren’t wrong…”

He can feel her fevered breath, her heart pounding like a drum as the heat rolls off her body. There is a point they should have stopped, a point long passed, evident enough by the ruined state of the rooftop. He’s drawing too much attention to himself. Showing too much of his hand. If this girl really is wolfie’s sister, then combined with the knowledge that he knows Junior, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for her to connect the dots and figure out he is the Demon Fox.

“So don’t hold back…”

Maybe it is the sleep deprivation. Maybe he really does want revenge for what she did to Junior’s nightclub. Maybe it is because there is a small part of him still just a bit star stuck whenever a particular semblance or ninjutsu catches his eye, a lingering echo of the dead-last nobody who dared to dream of the stars, who could never do anything but get left behind. Maybe it is brain damage from the punch that had launched him up onto this roof.

“Come at me with everything you have!”

He wants to see it. Like a child, he wants to see it.

“Show me how bright you burn! Because if you don’t-!”

His aura flares, erupting around him in a flurry of gold and flaming yellow. Golden fire surges through his body, leaking into the air around him, the first chain stretched to its very limit, the first gate starting to crack open. Anymore, aura and he won’t be able to keep from manifesting the first tail. There is a slight ache in his right eye, a stinging pain over the scar and under the seal he is using to suppress the wound.

It goes almost unnoticed beneath the heat and the flame and the juvenile excitement that splits his cheeks into a grin

Naruto pushes her back, overwhelming her strength easily with the force of the aura flooding his body. He spreads his arms, clenches his hands into fists and yells loud enough to be heard over the howling wind, over the roaring flames.

“- **I’m going to blow you away**!”

It doesn’t even take a second for her to respond to his challenge.

A spark ignites. A wave of power washes over him. Flames erupt upwards in a pillar of light and force, her hair igniting into threads of fiery gold. She matches his grin, passion painting her gaze a fiery crimson as she looks upon him with unhinged euphoria in her eyes, like a fire about to burn out of control. The roof trembles beneath the full release of her semblance, the force of every blow he managed to land filling her body with unmatched strength.

“This is what you want, right whiskers?!” she shouts back at him. “Don’t regret it! That’s why you wanted this fight, right?! Well here it is! This is everything I’ve got!”

“ **So, let’s see you take it**!”

Flames flood the roof around them, from his aura, from her semblance, both clashing, crashing against each other in a torrent of flame and passion. To an onlooker, it is quite the spectacle. A brilliant inferno of blazing gold descending on the three-story building, a thankfully, empty dorm, as the two at the eye of the storm stare at each other with wide, inflamed grins.

Then, they move. And the roof explodes.

Rubble and dust and fire spill out onto the third floor, the heat scorching the hallway, the force of their punches shaking the building to its foundations. Naruto tries to anchor himself to the floor, only for a punch to send him crashing into and through a wall, two foot-sized patches torn right out of the walkway. Yang leaps through the hole in the wall, coming at him with another punch. He jumps upwards over it, spins and plants his feet into her face. A burst of wind makes a second hole in the wall, his stomp launching her right across the hall into another room.

He dashes forward, jumping into a flying kick. She catches his leg. Throws him into a wall, the impact cracking the drywall behind him. He rolls away as a punch obliterates the barrier between the room and the outside, flaming brick and shattered concrete falling onto the street below.

A hook comes, one probably with enough strength to send him flying out of the building. Naruto ducks under it, slamming his fists into her stomach and ribs. The floor trembles beneath them with each blow and he slips an arm around her back, throwing her into the second of the room’s last two walls.

A burst of wind launches him forward. She brings her arms up. He smashes into her, the both of them flying across the building, ripping through the walls like they are made out of paper, tumbling in and out of the dorm rooms. They both roll back onto their feet and he lunges at her, his fist rocketing forward on a jet of wind.

She catches his punch. Her hair billows out behind her like a river of flame. She brings her fist down on the side of his head. His face hits the floor and goes through the floor, the rest of his body following him as he crashes onto the second floor of the building. Yang jumps down after him. Naruto rolls away as her fist smashes a crater into the walkway. He kicks her into the adjacent room and rolls onto his feet, jumping into the room after her.

The second floor meets the same fate as the third. They rip through the rooms, the reinforced walls falling, the windows shattering, and the doors torn from their hinges as the two dance a furious dance of wind and flame, punching and kicking, blocking and dodging, both matching the other’s movements without a single care for the growing destruction around them.

Her fist buries into his solar plexus and he shoots downward like a missile, smashing through the second floor and into the first. Naruto jumps to his feet. Yang jumps down and rushes him.  Her fists fly, smashing through his guard, crashing into his upper body. He throws out a punch and she ducks under it, laying into him with an almost desperate ferocity. A hook slams into his cheek. She grabs his arm and throws him into the floor hard enough for him to bounces back up to meet another flurry of punches.

Naruto manages to slip a punch through the furious onslaught, his fist meeting her face with a burst of wind. The storm of punches breaks. He jams a knee into her stomach. His fist meets her upper chest with a blast that shakes the whole building. A whirlwind of blows slams into her, each exploding with a burst of wind.

He throws a kick, only for her to slip past it with a hook that rattles his teeth. She grabs his shirt, shoves him back into a wall, charging at him with the same motion, a tackle sending them both through the reinforced drywall.

They tumble to the ground and she straddles him, pinning him down. Her fist crashes into his cheek. Once. Twice. Three times. There is a small crater under his head from the force of her blows. She draws her arm almost all the way back, winding up for a knockout.

And his arm snaps up, his fist catching her chin at just the right angle.

The impact echoes down the ruined hallway. Her entire head jerks like a bobble head doll, yellow flashing over her whole body and that yellow vanishing like snuffed out light.

The glow fades from her hair. Red fades back to a soft purple and fade further still. Her eyes go hazy, eyelids drooping. For a moment, she wobbles before her eyes roll up back into her head and she collapses onto him, Naruto sitting halfway up to catch her so as not to let her slam face-first into the floor.

Naruto shifts her so that her head rests on his shoulder, sitting all the way back up. Because of the difference in their height, there is little more he can do than to drape the taller girl over him like a big, blond blanket. Leaning back on one arm while the other holds the unconscious girl up, he takes a moment to let his body rest, his chest and stomach feeling like one big bruise at the moment.

While he is rather beat up, it’s nothing he hasn’t gone through before. If anything, this level of damage is negligible compared to what he usually goes through. His injuries will take care of themselves soon enough.

The building on the other hand…

“… Goodwitch is totally going to kill me.”

Well, whatever. It’s not like she hasn’t already tried to before. Twice, in fact. At this point, he’s sure his standing in the older huntress’s eyes is already low enough that busting up a building or two is hardly going to make a difference.

Gathering the unconscious Yang into his arms, a somewhat awkward task due to her being slightly taller than him, Naruto stands and prepares to leave. A flutter of wings stops him, a small, black bird entering the building through one of the many holes he and his partner in crime(property damage) had put in the walls.

It lands before him and looks to the unconscious girl.

Naruto perks a brow.

“Buzz off you, she’s not dead.”

As if acknowledging the truth to his words, the bird gives a flap of its wings. Then, it proceeds to stare at him. Without a sound. Just staring, almost like a statue.

Naruto gives the weird bird one last look before he leaves.

Blood red eyes follow him all the way out the door.

* * *

  
**AN: And we’re back.**

**This chapter is more or less my unedited stream of conscious since my beta is MIA currently. I apologize for the roughness because of it.**

 


	7. Chapter 7

Of Heroes and Monsters

Welcome to Beacon(II)

Chapter 7: Friend

* * *

Not far from the now defunct dormitory is a grassy field. Away from the building and streets and gray and whites of Beacon Academy is a hundred-meter track of grass, the occasional tree dotted here and there. A peaceful air hangs over the rectangular plains. It is probably a place for the students to come to relax and unwind, to get their minds away from the stress of school and have some alone time to meditate and collect themselves.

It is there Naruto Uzumaki finds himself, strewn out on the grass, watching the fluffy white clouds roll over the sky as he muses over the memories of his clones.

This morning, he created two clones for the purpose of reconnaissance, first instructing them to stay the hell away from Weiss, second telling them to keep an eye out for any red flags and third, tasking them with charting an escape route in the worst-case scenario. Standard procedure. Well, maybe not the first one, but the latter two are things he has his clones do for almost every job.

And right now, he is trying to decipher just what colored flag his clone has stumbled upon.

Wolfie. Weiss. An ex-White Fang. The girl he just fought, who trashed Junior’s club… and who is _apparently_ also wolfie’s sister… or half-sister or cousin or something…

…

Anyway, point is, there are too many coincidences for his liking. And not just that the sum total of his interactions with the coming students of Beacon have been with girls. If experience has taught him anything, it’s that these sorts of coincidences are never, _ever_ , a good sign.

Then, there’s also…

His fingers press against the skin just under his right eye. Over the thin scar stretching over his eyelid and past the eyebrow. It aches with a dull throb, tracing a sharp pain under the patch of discolored skin. The seal he put over it appears to be doing its job well enough, but from what he can tell, the wound still hasn’t healed.

There is something not just stopping his regeneration but actively trying to spread. Almost like a virus.

Fortunately, a combination of the seal he put over it and his regeneration seem to be beating whatever it is back.

 _‘In other words, it should go away as long as I don’t push myself too hard,’_ he thinks, letting his arm fall to his side.

Idly, he wonders if he should be more concerned about the little, silver-eyed girl who cut out his eye. Not that he is concerned, or that he really cares that much at all, but there is a small part of him questioning if it really is okay to just dismiss something like this out of hand.

It is probably the part of him that has come to rely on his near instantaneous healing as a crutch, he concludes.

After all, any normal person would simply lose their eye if it was cut out. A normal person would die if stabbed in the heart or shot in the head. Normal people die when they’re killed, unlike freaks of nature like him. So the girl can inflict injuries to him that have the same effects they would have on a normal person without a powerful, healing factor.

So what?

He isn’t afraid of death. He hasn’t been afraid of dying for years.

Still, it is annoying. Pain is still painful. Whatever the weird girl’s power is, it apparently has the ability to cause him plenty of pain.

Thankfully, there is a simple solution. A solution to avoiding wolfie’s strange powers, to keep her or Weiss or the ex-White Fang or even Yang from figuring out who he is.

And that solution is to stay as far away from them as humanly possible. A solution he will get right around to implementing as soon as he returns wolfie’s weapon to her.

Beacon is a pretty big school, after all. It shouldn’t be too hard.

Right?

“Mng--?”

A sound comes from next to him, the sound of the previously passed out girl now regaining consciousness.

“Morning glass jaw.”

“Jackass~,” Yang hisses, bringing her arms up and stretching in a way that does amazing things to her chest. With a grunt, she relaxes into the grass, spreading her arms, a tired but satisfied smile on her lips. “How long was I out?”

“Like five minutes.”

“Oh, nice. Still have a bit before the assembly.”

Naruto blinks, squints, staring into her eyes. He isn’t certain. It may be because he spent so long staring into those eyes while they were a furious crimson, but he swears the color of her iris is a few shades lighter than before. Closer to a blue-violet than the soft purple they were originally.

He perks a brow and puts a voice to his thoughts. “What’s with your eyes?”

“Hm?” she lazily swings her head to the side to look at him.

“They’re… They kind of look bluer than they were before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Mmm~…” Yang makes a thinking face for a second before she shrugs. “Dunno. Never gone that wild with my semblance before, so maybe it’s like a cooldown period or something?”

“Is that right?” Naruto says. He sits up and reaches behind her head.

There is a slight pinch. He holds up a single strand of golden blond hair, dangling it over her.

“Hey…” Yang sits halfway up. For a moment, that pale violet goes back to purple and then a slight red before it fades back. Exhaustion pervades her entire form, not just from the color of her eyes but also in the slight slouch of her posture as well as the weak half-glare she gives him, all sending the message she just doesn’t have the energy to do better.

Then, the hair explodes into a tiny cloud of smoke. Naruto smirks, letting the blade of grass held between his fingers drop to the ground.

“Gotcha.”

She lets out a small snort, smiling as she smooshes a hand against his cheek, as if to try and wipe the smirk off his face. Failing that, she lets herself fall back down onto the grass, making herself comfortable.

“So what now?”

“I was thinking of fixing you up and then going to the assembly thing.”

“Couldn’t have done that while I was passed out?”

“Healing you or going to the assembly?”

“Healing.”

“Because I need to use a seal to do it and I don’t really like the idea of putting a seal on someone without their permission. Even if my damn clones don’t seem to think the same way…”

The last part he mutters to himself. Seriously. Aren’t shadow clones supposed to be exact copies of him? Then again, that his apparent clones all seem to have their own, differing personalities probably says more about him than anything else…

“Seals?” Yang furrows her brow. “You mean like that stuff from those ero-books?”

“What- That’s… it… I mean…ngh…”

Naruto can feel the heat gathering in his cheeks. He pinches his eyes shut, all too aware of the busty blond’s gaze on him as he covers his face with a hand and resists the urge to summon his mask. It takes a moment for him to regain his bearings, in part because he actually knows exactly what she is talking about and because they _can_ be used that way and because _he_ knows how to use them that way and _damn it you shitty old toad, you and your crappy book series._

It’s no wonder everyone thinks seals are either ninja voodoo or porn magic.

Finally, he gathers the courage to remove his palm from his face and look her in the eye. “Look, it’s not like that okay?! Seals don’t…! I mean, you can, but- look, that’s not what they’re _supposed_ to be used for okay?!”

“So it’s _not_ going to make me super horny?” she asks with a leer and a wiggle of her brow.

Naruto returns a flat glare, one made all the less effective by the faint blush over his cheeks.

“Do you want me to heal you or not?”

“Come on whiskers, don’t be such a stick in the mud!” she grins. “After all, you did bring me all the way over here so we could be _all alone, pounding_ me and _working my body_ until I just _exploded_.”

“Yeah, and then you rolled over and passed out.”

It is a small victory, but one he will take nevertheless. She shoots him a slight glare and turns away with a small pout.

“You just got lucky…”

“Whatever,” Naruto rolls his eyes with a smirk. “So? You good if I put a seal on you?”

“Sure, sure.”

Naruto takes a paintbrush and a bottle of ink from his jacket, positioning himself over her exposed stomach. Yang squirms only slightly, the ticklish feeling of the wet brush tempting her to giggle, something that would surely be painful for her as beaten and bruised as she is.

“Hey, thanks.”

“Hm?” Naruto perks a brow, not looking away from his work on the seal over her stomach.

“For sticking around and doing this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says in nonchalant tone, dipping the brush back in the ink. “There’s probably going to be some sort of field test tomorrow, so I’d feel bad if you failed because you were too sore from getting your ass kicked.”

“Who got their ass kicked? I got in way more shots than you did!”

“Sure, you did,” Naruto smirks. He pokes the side of her stomach. “Now which one of us is flat on their back?”

She scoffs and winces. “This going to very long?”

“The seal’s easy enough. It’s the part afterwards that’s a bit more tricky.”

“Tricky?”

“For me. You just have to tell me if you feel anything weird. The idea is basically that I’m using this seal and our auras to trick my healing factor into thinking your body is mine. It should be fine, but everyone’s aura is different, so I don’t know if yours will have some weird reaction to mine or something. If something’s off, you’ll notice before me.”

“Mm.” she gives a grunt of affirmation. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What’s a _cute, little, baby ninja_ like you doing around someone like Junior?”

“There’s actually nothing about the first part of that sentence that doesn’t piss me off,” Naruto notes with an irritable expression. “First, not cute. Second, just because I’m not huge and full of big, hard muscles like you doesn’t mean I’m little.”

“Excuse me? I am _not_ full of muscles.”

“Third, I’m fifteen,” he says with a smirk at her offended look. “And fourth, I’m not a ninja. Trained by ninjas. Probably better at ninja’ing than most ninjas. But no, I am not officially a ninja.”

“So, how’d you end up here? You said you didn’t just come here for me, right?”

Naruto takes a moment. Quirks a brow as he comes up with the appropriate response.

“I beat up a teacher.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Apparently, Ozpin was so impressed he invited me to come to his school.”

Sure there are some… minor details… missing, but that is pretty much what got him into Beacon, isn’t it? It definitely wasn’t because of his ‘good heart’ or any sentimental crap like that. He’s sure that whole spiel Ozpin gave about him showing ‘mercy’ to wolfie and the witch is just lip service.

“Hm.” Yang purses her lips, rolls the bit of information around in her head. For a moment, she says nothing. Then, she gives him a smile. “So this is like your big break, huh?”

“… Something like that.” Naruto says with an unreadable expression. He finishes the seal with one last stroke, putting away the brush and ink bottle. “There, that should do it.”

It is a double-layered spiral, painted in ink over her belly button. To a seal master’s eye, it is a conversation matrix layered cleverly within a filtrate class and a double-reverse feedback method with an internal array suited primarily for ease of access. To the untrained eye, it is a seemingly indecipherable mess of scribbles in the vague shape of a swirl, the shapely and toned stomach beneath far more worthy of note.

“Alright,” Naruto holds his right hand over the seal, his left hand clasped around his wrist. “Tell me if anything feels painful or off, okay?”

“Got it.”

Aura flows from the pit of his stomach, creeping up his shoulder and over his arm. It pools into his hand. He coaxes it into the outside, a swirl of ink on his palm acting as a bridge.

It is as if there is gasoline mixed into the ink. The swirl on his hand and the swirl on her stomach both ignite into brilliant gold, a heatless flame catching over the ink.

Naruto frowns. Furrows his brow in concentration. A chill washes over him, the contrast between the warmth pulsing through his hand and the cold filling the rest of his body causing a needling sensation to creep up his arm. The ache in his right eye becomes a slight pinch. He squeezes the eye shut. The pinch then becomes a stab and a warm wetness begins to bubble up beneath his eyelid.

_‘I figured that’d be the case…’_

Still, he doesn’t break his technique. Holding his hand over her stomach, he continues to channel aura into the seal. Soon enough, the flame fades and the seal vanishes into her skin. Naruto lets out a sigh. His aura retreats. He pulls his hand back, clenching and unclenching it into a fist to get some of the feeling back in it.

“You done?” Yang asks, propping herself up on her elbows.

“Yeah, that should be good.”

“Whoo-!”

Yang smiles, all but bouncing to her feet as her eyes return to their regular shade of soft purple. She looks to her hands, flexes and touches her muscles, feeling none of the soreness or exhaustion from when she first woke up. Her hand comes to rest on her stomach, a soothing warmth radiating from under her palm.

“Wow, this thing works fast…” With a teasing smirk, she turns back to Naruto. “Hey, I thought you said this thing wasn’t supposed to make me su-“

The words die on her lips when she sees the trail of red leaking out from his right eye.

“Oh my god,” Yang rushes to crouch down next to him. “What’s wrong? Did I hit you too hard? Is your eye okay?”

“ _I_ am fine.” Naruto grins, sounding not at all concerned by the blood dripping from his right eye. “ _See_ what I did there?”

With the slightest smile, she gives him a flat stare and perks a brow. “Really?”

“What? Not a fan?”

“I’d say your puns leave a lot to be des _i_ red.”

“Oof. Think that one hurt more than the punches.”

“Not the best _punchline_ , eh? But hey. Seriously. Your eye okay?”

“It’s fine,” Naruto waves away her concern, wiping the blood off on his sleeve. “I don’t have anywhere near the control needed to use actual healing techniques, so I just use seals and my own healing factor to compensate.”

He puts a hand over his eye, making sure to completely cover the scar. An array of ink and symbols appears over his face, centered over his right eye.

“Let’s see… I’ll just sack functionality to increase the power to the containment and suppression nodes.”

The array of seals shifts and morphs, the ink crawling seamlessly over his skin. Soon enough, the symbols settle and fade back into his skin. Naruto removes his hand. Blinks his right eye. The blood is gone and the scar is still there, but now a milky sheen covers the iris.

“Yeah, so basically I just trick my healing factor into thinking someone else’s body is part of mine and piggyback off of that,” he continues his explanation. “But, the problem is I have to shut down my own healing factor or else it’ll think their body _is_ mine and will try to heal it like it’s mine. And that can get kind of messy.”

“What, so I’d grow a dick or something?”

Naruto closes his right eye and gives her a one-eyed deadpan. “That, or it’d trigger an auto-immune response where your body treats the newly healed parts like a foreign entity and attacks them.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty bad…” Yang mumbles with a worried look, poking her stomach. “So, did everything…”

“You’re fine.” Naruto dismisses her worry with a casual shrug. “That’s what the seals are for. They’re basically twenty-something layers of safeguards to shut everything down if it starts to go wrong. Besides…”

He makes a troubled expression. Looks away. Yang gives him a questioning look.

“What is it?”

A cough. “It… seems like since your semblance is based around transforming energy, it’s fairly easy for your aura to absorb mine and distil what’s needed from it to use as its own. My elemental affinity is wind and my aura is a bit… different than most people’s. I’d be willing to bet your affinity is fire and, given the typical interaction between those two elements when used in conjunction, it is likely that it augmented the natural inclination of your aura due to your semblance.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m _reeeally_ good at taking you in.”

“And that’s _exactly_ what I was trying to avoid saying.”

“Oh, I know,” she grins.

“Right.” A sigh. “Now hey, serious talk for a second.”

His voice drops a pitch. His gaze sharpens.  It is a near imperceptible change, but one enough to make Yang all too aware of how the boy in front of her took her at her best and still had the aura to spare to heal her afterwards.

“I’m not here to rip off your head or anything but trashing the bar of an information broker really is the best way to paint a target on your back. Junior’s a shit but he’s not a petty shit so he probably won’t hold a grudge. You got lucky on that front. But if you had done this in say, Mistral or pretty much anywhere in the Elemental Nations, you’d have bounty hunters and _ni-njas_ breathing down your neck for the rest of what’d probably be a pretty short life.”

Naruto squeezes his eyes shut. Tries to ignore the heat gathering in his cheeks, hoping against hope that the older girl hadn’t noticed the slight crack in his voice. He cracks open an eye, only to come face to face with a merciless grin and a wordless promise of endless teasing to come.

“I‘ll try not to make it a habit.” Yang manages to squeeze out, doing her best to keep a straight face.

“G-good,” Naruto grunts, squeezing his eyes shut, rising to his feet. “Anyway! I’m going to go to the assembly! You can rest here or go or do whatever you want, as long as you know not to pull that crap again!”

“Nah, I’m good, I’ll go with you.” Yang stands, all smiles as she slaps a hand against his back. “So, what’d you think?”

“About what?”

“My semblance, stupid. Isn’t that what this whole thing was about?”

“You did beat up some of my frie-,” no, that is not the right word. “Acqua-,” not that either. “You beat up the people who are sometimes marginally useful to me.”

“Your… friends?”

“Acquaintances.”

“Friends?”

“Associates.”

“Friends.”

With an annoyed grunt, Naruto shoves his hands into his pockets and turns around. He begins to walk away, only for an arm to sling around his neck and yank him off his feet.

“Aw~!” Yang gushes, trapping the younger boy in a one-sided hug. “I’m sorry I beat up your _friends~_! I mean, I’m still going to get you back for that nipple twist, but no wonder you were so angry!”

“Who’d be friends with those losers?! I-I just wanted to see your semblance! This has nothing to do with them, I don’t care, I don’t! Get- get off!”

He pauses in his struggling to give her a questioning look. “And what do you mean ‘get me back’? You already punched me in the face. Repeatedly.”

“And you punched me in the face, repeatedly! Come on, it’ll just be a light tap.”

“… if I say no, you’re just going to randomly punch me in the balls, aren’t you?”

Yang gives him a wide smile.

“Ugh… fine. Can you at least wait until we get to the auditorium? That way I’ll have an excuse for not being awake during that stupid assembly.”

“Alright.”

As if to make sure he won’t run away, Yang tucks Naruto under her arm and begins to make her way back to the courtyard, carrying him like a sack of potatoes towards the main building and his final destination.

“Oh yeah, speaking of which, how come it never really felt like I was hitting aura whenever I punched you?” she asks. “You took it like it was nothing so I didn’t really think much about it, but what’s up with that?”

“That’s cause I use reinforcement.”

“Rein-what? Is that like the tree-walking thing?”

“Not really… I’d say the whole thing with tree walking is closer to how you guys use the recoil from your guns to move around. As for reinforcement…”

Naruto squints his eyes in thought. Taps his chin. He takes a moment to collect his thoughts, to figure out how to explain it in a way even someone like him can understand.

“Let me put it this way,” he begins, raising one finger. “The way you guys use aura in the Kingdoms is called shielding. It’s not a very intuitive name, honestly I think it’d be better if they called it ‘armor’, but that’s beside the point. The idea is that you form a ‘shell’ around your body that acts as a shield against attacks. Which, I’m guessing is where they got that name from.”

“Reinforcement could be considered the opposite. Rather than defending with a layer of aura outside of your body, reinforcement is channeling aura through your body, packing your muscle fibers and bones and cells with aura. In addition to increasing your durability, it also gives a boost to your speed and strength.”

“Huh. That sounds pretty useful. How come they don’t teach that in the Kingdoms?” Yang asks.

“A couple reasons. One is that reinforcement has a much higher learning curve,” Naruto explains. “Shielding is simpler to use. People reflexively tense up when they are about to be hit. Building off of that instinct isn’t very hard and forming the ‘shell’ takes some getting used to but is relatively easy. On the other hand, with reinforcement, it’s not as simple as just shoving as much aura into your body as you can. You need to have at least a basic understanding of muscle, bone and tendon structures because if you don’t, you’re likely to injure yourself by reinforcing the wrong parts too much or too little.”

“What about when your aura breaks?” Yang asks. “Or does that not happen with reinforcement?”

“You’re right, it doesn’t. Reinforcement splits the strain between the body and aura where shielding puts the burden almost entirely on one’s aura. By the time your aura breaks, if you’re using reinforcement, you’re probably already dead.”

“And that’s another reason,” Naruto continues. “If your arm gets chomped by a grimm and you’re using shielding, your aura may break and you might end up with a bruise but that’d be it. If you’re using reinforcement, on the other hand, you’re probably losing the arm. To put it simply, while reinforcement and its external counterpart, enhancement, have more offensive capabilities, they don’t offer anywhere near the defense of shielding. It’s the reason why ninjas have upwards of four to five times the rate of deaths and career ending injuries than huntsman do.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Four to five? Damn… no wonder…”

“Hm?”

“Ah, it’s just… all my dad’s old, ninja pals are dead,” Yang says in a sad tone. “Well, except for one, but… they don’t really talk anymore. He puts flowers out for them every year.”

“Flowers, huh…” Naruto mutters under his breath. He lets his gaze fall, for a moment pondering over his own words, over the statistic he had remembered for whatever reason. The man who told it to him looked very much like he does now. White hair. Scar over the one eye. There is a part of him that cannot help but find the similarities amusing.

And in his mind, he counts.

…

_‘Yeah… five is about right, isn’t it?’_

“Hey, so uh… you think it’d be worth it for me to learn that reinforcement stuff?”

A voice pulls him from his thoughts. Naruto looks up at the speaker.

“Eh… I’m not sure,” he admits. “I’d need to know the details of your semblance to be sure.”

“Oh yeah, so what’d you think?” Yang asks with a smile. “Of my semblance, I mean. My dad says it’s just like a giant, temper tantrum, but I don’t think it’s that bad.”

“A temper tantrum?” Naruto blanches. “No way, you’re semblance is awesome! It’s insane how much stronger you got while we were fighting! And the way your hair glows like that… it’s amazing. No wonder you got so angry when I pulled out one of your hairs. I’ve seen a lot of fire based semblances, but they’re all so dark and destructive… yours… it’s one of the most beautiful one’s I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s, uh… wow. So you’ve really got a thing for semblances?”

“Eh, yeah,” he says with a sheepish chuckle. “I mean, isn’t it just so cool, having some power based on part of your personality? Something unique and special to you? It’s just… I don’t know. I’ve always loved seeing new semblances. Ever since I was a kid.”

“Huh, déjà vu…”

“What?”

“Oh, uh, it’s nothing. I mean, you do the whole ‘catching on fire and powering up’ thing too, right? So it’s not like my semblance is really all that special or anything…”

“Sure it is! Call it splitting hairs or whatever, but my strength is just… whenever I finally run up against something stronger than me, there’s nothing I can do. But you, it’s like as long as you can keep fighting, you’ll just keep getting stronger. Who cares if getting angry is what it takes? So what? Get angry! Get mad! Anger that’s… something you can control. In the end, that strength is all yours… it all comes from you. The power to turn your pain into strength, that’s… it’s got to be one of the best semblances ever.”

“You really think so?” Yang says, somewhat embarrassed by the younger boy’s glowing praise. “Well what about you? I bet your semblance is really something too, right?”

“My semblance…” Naruto plasters on a smile, does his best to not let his inner thoughts show on his face. The urge to summon his mask returns, this time for an entirely different reason, and all he can do is scratch at his cheek to resist.

“The only thing my semblance can do is hurt the people around me.”

Silence follows his admission. The reason why is obvious enough. Him, who apparently has a semblance that negatively effectives those around him. Her, in close enough proximity to be considered ‘around’ him. Naruto glances away, mentally berating himself for the slip up.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about anything.” he is quick to reassure her. “I usually have my aura sealed off and that suppresses my semblance. So that… that…”

Naruto trails off as he feels a sensation on his cheek. The very same that woke him up from his nap earlier. And in a flat voice, he responds the very same way he did before.

“What are you doing?”

“Aw, you don’t purr?” the grin is audible in her voice. With the arm not holding him up, Yang strokes the whisker marks on his cheeks.

 _‘And this is why I wear that damned mask,’_ Naruto thinks with a twitchy expression. _‘No wonder that girl with the cat ears wanted to hide them under that ribbon… I should probably apologize to her if I run into her again.’_

“No,” he answers in the driest tone he can muster. “No, I do not. You know I’m not a faunus, right?”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Hm,” the hand stops stroking his cheek. Yang smiles at him, flipping her hair back. “Well, semblance or no semblance, you’re still crazy strong. It’s no wonder you got into Beacon so early! What about a weapon? You use any weapons?”

“Sort of? I can’t really turn them into a gun, but I got these I guess.”

He holds up an arm and summons his chains. Yang looks the aura constructs over. Perks a brow. Her smile widens as she regards the chains with interest.

“Oooh, kinky.”

“Is this going to be a regular thing with you?”

“Are you going to stop calling me big and full of muscles?”

“Nope.”

“Well there you go.”

“What do you want me to call you then? Boob-zilla?”

“You could always just go with ‘Yang’, but ‘big sis’ works too.”

“Boobs it is.”

“Big sis!”

“No.”

“I’d also accept ‘Onee-chan’.”

“Not even if you payed me.”

As if just remembering something, Naruto tilts his head up. He flicks his wrist and the chains shatter into motes of light, the light coming back together into the shape of a three-pronged knife. “Oh yeah, I can also do kunai.”

“Psh, that’s not a weapon,” Yang rolls her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “Your glowing, kitchen knives might be considered weapons in the Elemental Nations. But here? In the Kingdoms? We don’t consider it a _real_ weapon unless it can ‘at least’ transform into a gun.”

Without looking away, Naruto twirls the knife in his hand, its form bursting into golden flames and those flames forming into a simple pistol. He raises the small handgun, one of his still-blond eyebrows rising as well.

“That’s more like it! How’s that work anyway? Can you just make any weapon you want?”

“Pretty much,” he says, letting his arm fall and dispelling the glowing gun back into aura. “I just usually don’t do anything other than knives and chains because it’s not really worth the effort.”

“Mmm… what about a scythe?”

“You mean like this?”

Naruto raises his hand, gold and shadow shaping into the form of a giant, flaming scythe, one easily taller than him.

For a moment, Yang regards the aura construct.

“Sooo~, yeah! I’ve got a little sister, cute as a button, bit of a nerd, kind of got a thing for weapons. You two should talk! She’s going to be attending Beacon this year too. I bet the two of you would make great friends.”

The scythe shatters back into light and nothingness. “Well, that depends. How little are we talking here?”

“Fifteen.”

 _‘Lies.’_ “Oh, I meant her boobs.”

“Careful, whiskers,” Yang smirks.

“We’re here.”

“Urk-“

Indeed, the doors to Beacon’s main hall looms before them, a steady stream of students walking past them, making their way into the building. It is royal and regal, the whole of the prestigious huntsman academy stretching out before them. Past the front venue are towers, spired buildings connected by arches surrounding a central high-rise, lights and revolving gears visible past the glass walls of the headmaster’s office.

The shining Beacon. All in all, it reminds him of a castle.

Or at least some sort of prison.

“So, whiskers,” Yang lets him down, stepping in front of him, cracking her knuckles. “Any last words?”

“Uh… have mercy?”

“Nope.”  


* * *

  
**AN: New chapter. It’s a bit shorter than I’d like, but it was either 5k words or 10k and as I said, I didn’t have as much time to write this week. Editor side is saying there isn’t enough progress, but I’d rather make the story more coherent as a whole instead of focus on weekly turnouts.**

 


	8. Chapter 8: mask

“Um… Yang?”

“What’s up, little sister?”

With worry, Ruby Rose looks to the unconscious body tucked under her older sister’s arm as the rest of the first years finish filtering into the main hall. Only the occasional odd glance is shot in their direction, something she finds almost as worrying as the thought that her dear sister may have very well punched someone out on their first day at Beacon.

“Who… is that?” she points at the unmoving head of white hair.

“Oh, I made a new friend!”

Ruby looks from the smiling Yang, her clothes somewhat dirtied but the blond brawler herself apparently unharmed, to the limp body under her arm.

“By ‘made’, you mean it was mutual, right?” she asks with a concerned expression. “You didn’t just beat up some guy and kidnap him?”

“Whaaat, me?! Of course not! Me and whiskers are great friends! Ain’t that right, whiskers?”

“Damn… tit monster…”

A weak whimper comes from the mess of white hair.

“Tit monster…?” she mutters. Ruby tilts her head, an inexplicable sense of familiarity striking her at the sound of the strained voice.

Almost like she has heard it somewhere before.

“See? Great friends!” Yang chirps. “So, how’s your day been?”

“You mean since you ditched me?!” Ruby huffs, for a moment putting aside the strange feeling to air her grievances at her older sister. “Yeah! While you were out ‘befriending’ this guy, I was busy _exploding_!”

“Yikes. Meltdown already?”

“No! I mean I _literally_ blew a hole in front of the building! There was fire… and I think some ice?”

Yang gives her a knowing smile. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“Somehow…” a groan. “Somehow I doubt it.”

The voice comes from under Yang’s arm. Her sister’s now-awake captive lifts his head to reveal a single blue eye and three whisker marks across both his cheeks. His gaze flicks around the room, lingering on Ruby for only a moment before he turns to shoot an annoyed look at his captor.

“Wow, quick turnaround.” Yang whistles with a raised brow. “Figured you’d be out for at least a half hour or so.”

“Yeah, me too.” He grumbles.

Who is this guy? How does he know her sister? Why does he sound more annoyed at having regained conscious so quickly rather than being knocked unconscious in the first place? Questions stream through Ruby’s mind, yet more than any of the others, one in particular floats to the forefront of her mind.

She crouches, puts her hands on her knees as she leans in to get a better look at his face, at those strange markings on his cheeks.

They aren’t real whiskers. If anything, they look more like tattoos. And while her first instinct is to call them cat whiskers, for whatever reason, the animal that comes to mind is-

“You… have fox whiskers.”

Unbidden, her thoughts slip from her lips. The fox(?) faunus turns to her, giving her a questioning look. “… Ha?”

“Ah, no I didn’t mean anything by that!” Ruby steps back, distancing herself with a truly impressive speed and _oh god why did she just do that_. “I-It’s just that we don’t really see too many faunus in Patch and the ones we do see have some kind of animal parts and when I saw your whiskers, I thought they didn’t really look like whisker-whiskers but kind of like those kitty-face whiskers, s-so I wanted to get a closer look, a-and, um…”

It really is impressive how flexible she is, to be able to put her foot in her mouth like that.

“Y-yeah, they kind of look more like fox whiskers instead of kitty whiskers, you know cause kitty whiskers are cute but yours make you look kind of tricky and fox-like-“ _STOP! STOOOOP!_ “-B-but that’s not really a bad thing! I mean, they’re still kind of cute and I’m not really a ‘cat person’ or a ‘dog person’ and we even have a dog at home! Yeah, his name is Zwei! And dogs and foxes are supposed to be in the same family of animals, I-I think, s-so I, um…”

At last, silence. Her voice trails off. The heat in her cheeks finally manages to overload her brain, turning her complexion the very same shade as her hood and bringing the stream of thoughts spilling out of her mouth to a merciful end. She looks to her sister with a desperate plea for aid in her eyes.

Yang mouths the word ‘name’. Despite her embarrassment, Ruby manages to sneak a peek at the white-haired faunus, only to find him looking back at her with a strange expression. Curiosity? Bafflement? She isn’t exactly sure what to call it, but it is clear enough she _definitely_ isn’t what he expected her to be.

“H-hey, so I’m Ruby…” she manages to get out before her lips clamp shut and her gaze drops to her feet.

This day sucks.

First Yang ditched her. Then she got yelled at. Then she exploded. Then she got yelled at some more. And now she’s just word vomited all over her sister’s new friend. Sure, she met Jaune and he seems kind of nice but he’s not here and neither is Crescent Rose and she’s pretty sure she’s about to get yelled at again. That’s probably why he seems familiar. Because the scar and the hair and eye color all remind her of a certain heiress and all that’s missing is the angry yelling, something that’s probably right now about to change.

“I… don’t know how to respond to that so I’m not going to,” he says in an understandably troubled tone. “Anyway, I’m Naruto. By the way, I’m not a faunus.”

“O-oh.” It’s okay. That’s not so bad! He doesn’t seem angry or offended, so don’t say anything stupid. Just apologize like a normal person. “I’m, uh, not a faunus either!”

_‘Whyyy…’_

A blink. “Right. So… boobs here tells me you’re the same age as me?”

“Really?” Ruby perks up, choosing to focus on this particular piece of information instead of how she has most likely forever labeled herself as ‘the friend’s really weird, younger sister’. “Uh, how old are you?”

“Fifteen, sixteen in October.”

“Ah, me too!”

He gives her a small smile, laced with amusement. “October 10th.”

“I’m October 31st! Heh, same day as Halloween!”

“Looks like you’re still the youngest one here, then. Think you’re up for it, being here at Beacon a whole, two years early?”

“Aha…” Ruby lets out a weak chuckle. Scratches her head. “Maybe. It… hasn’t been the best, first day of school ever.”

“Well, you seem to still be own your own two feet, so you’ve got me beat,” he reassures her, still being held under her older sister’s arm. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. But, eh, you might want to work on those first impressions.”

“Yeah…” Ruby admits, a blush of embarrassment returning to her cheeks.

“Like you can talk,” Yang helpfully interjects. She pokes his cheek. “How come she gets a happy ‘hi, nice to meet you’ while I got the super-purple-nurple?”

“That’s ‘cause she’s nice and cute while you’re mean and full of rock hard muscles,” Naruto declares with a flat expression.

Yang drops him. He hits the floor with a dull ‘thud’.

“Ow…”

“How’s the floor for ya?” Yang grins, nudging him with her foot. “Still think my muscles are ‘rock hard’?”

“Yes.”

A chuckle escapes her at her sister’s fake pout. Ruby smiles, her fears and anxiety beginning to melt away as Naruto rolls onto his back with a groan.

Then, it comes from behind her. A familiar voice at a very familiar volume.

_“You!”_

“EEP!”

She all but jumps into her sister’s arms as the exploding heiress makes her presence known, bringing back with her all of the memories of fire and ice and yelling. Lots and lots of yelling. Hands on her hips and brow creased in annoyance, Weiss Schnee pins Ruby with an angry sneer.

“You’re lucky we weren’t blown off the side of the cliff!”

Yang gives her sister a bewildered look. “Oh my god, you actually exploded.”

“It was an accident!” Ruby swears as Yang lets her down. “It was an accident!”

“What’s this?”

Dust for dummies… and other inadequate individuals?

“The Schnee Dust Company is not responsible for any injuries or damages sustained while operating a Schnee Dust Company product-,” Weiss begins to recite, her voice becoming higher, faster, squeakier as she goes until the words all but fuse together.

“Although notmandatory,theSchneeFamily highlyencouragestheircustomerstoreadandfamiliarizethemselveswiththiseasy-to-followguidetoDustapplicationandpracticeinthefield.”

“Uhhh…”

“You really want to start making things up to me?” Weiss asks with a glare.

Ruby looks to the pamphlet. “Absolutely…”

She was (kind of) able to recover and patch things up with Naruto. Maybe she and Weiss can do the same?

Alas, those budding hopes are dashed as the heiress shoves the pamphlet into her hands and crosses her arms with a scowl.

“Read this and don’t ever speak to me again.”

So much for that.

“Ahem-.”

The sound of someone clearing their throat comes from below them. Weiss looks down. Naruto gives her a wave.

“Yo.”

“ ** _YOU._** ”

“Me,” Naruto replies, brushing off the heiress’s anger as easily as he brushed off Ruby’s own disastrous first introduction.

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Um… laying on the floor?”

“I can see that! _Why_?!”

“I’m recovering from being viciously assaulted for reasons that are totally not my fault.”

“Keep telling yourself that, whiskers.”

Weiss looks from Naruto to Yang and back to Naruto, her lips wrinkling into a sneer.

“Ugh, would you stand up?!” she grabs his collar, yanking him to his feet. “Do you even know where this is? This is _Beacon Academy_ , the preeminent school for training huntsmen and huntresses in the Kingdoms, led by the illustrious Professor Ozpin himself! This is a prestigious establishment for higher learning and the betterment of humanity, _not_ somewhere for you to just sleep and lay around! Are you even listening to me? What do you have to say for yourself?!”

A lazy blink. Naruto gives the heiress a flat stare, his posture slouched as though he can’t be bothered to put more than the minimum effort into standing. His gaze shifts from her left eye to her right, to the scar nearly a mirror of his own and back, settling on her unscarred eye for whatever reason.

“Geez e.p.f., what’s got your panties in a twist,” he asks, digging a finger into his ear. “You know all that stress isn’t good for you, right? No wonder your hair’s already gone white.”

“My natural color _is_ white, you ignoramus!”

Naruto leans towards Ruby. “What’s ignoramus mean?”

“I, uh, think she just called you… stupid.” Ruby gives him a confused look. “But what’s, um, e.p.f mean?”

“It stands for exploding panty flasher.”

“Exploding?” Yang says with a snicker.

“Panty?” Ruby tilts her head in confusion.

 _“Flasher?!!!_ ” Weiss all but shrieks, her eyes bloodshot with rage, her hands clenching as though wrapping around something. Like someone’s neck. “Wha-?! The nerve-! How _dare_ you!”

“You did sort of flash me everything earlier,” Naruto shrugs. Then, he scratches his cheek and gives her a sort of pitying gaze, his eye dropping to her chest.

“Ah, though I guess everything for you isn’t all that much, is it?”

There is a moment of silence. Ruby stares in stunned shock.

“Wow whiskers, you do not have a filter, do you?” Yang says with a wide eyes.

“What?” Naruto looks to her and perks a brow. “Did I say something wrong?”

The genuine cluelessness seems only to further enrage her. With a great and mighty breath, her lips part and Weiss prepares to lay into the whiskered boy.

“Why you _mangy, little-_!”

**“Ahem.”**

Then, the speakers blare to life, feedback from the microphone drawing their attention to the front of the hall. Standing at the podium and looking half asleep, Professor Ozpin clears his throat, looking over the gathered students, his gaze pausing for the slightest of moments when it passes over them.

**“I’ll… keep this brief.”**

Weiss shoots Naruto a dirty look, whatever she was about to say dying on her tongue. With one last glare, she turns her gaze forward. Naruto’s eye lingers on the heiress for only a moment, again lingering on the scar over her left eye, before he turns his gaze to the podium as well.

**“You have traveled here today in search of knowledge. To hone your craft and acquire new skills. And when you are finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people.”**

It is only for an instant. A subtle shift Ruby would not have caught if she hadn’t been looking at him at the exact time it happened.

For a single moment, something dark and ugly twists his lips into a humorless smile.

His left eye flashes a bloody crimson.

And then it’s gone, his face returning to a bored, placid expression.

**“But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy in need of purpose. Direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this. But your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step.”**

… Huh? Is that it?

Naruto scoffs. Yang flips her hair. Ruby and Weiss share a glance in their confusion.

Professor Ozpin hobbles away on his cane. Next, Professor Goodwitch steps up to the microphone.

**“You will gather in the ballroom tonight. Tomorrow, your initiation begins. Be ready. You are dismissed.”**

“He seemed kind of… off,” Yang notes as the rest of the crowd begins to leave.

Ruby nods in agreement. “It’s almost like he wasn’t even there… Naruto?”

“Mmm?”

It’s as though what she saw never happened. The lazy, half-asleep look is back in place, his expression still relaxed, still warm, but with a certain tenseness about it.

Almost like a mask.

“Um…” Ruby fumbles for something else to say. “So, uh, what kind of weapon do you use?”

He perks up. “Oh yeah, that reminds me.”

“Here,” he digs a hand into his jacket. “Ozpin wanted me to give this back to you.”

A small pop. Somehow, someway, the white-haired boy manages to pull something roughly the size of a suitcase from his jacket. It is a strange and inexplicable violation of the laws of physics, something Ruby might have thought to comment on, were the entirety of her attention not taken up by just what it is he retrieved from the hammer space of his jacket.

“Crescent Rose!”

Who, what, where, when, how, why, none of it matters to her as far as that her beloved has been returned to her. With a flurry of her semblance for good measure, Ruby rushes to embrace her sweetheart, intentionally or unintentionally pulling Naruto into a glomp.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank youuu~!!!”

It’s as though this singular moment has made everything she’s had to deal with today worth it. As though all is right in the world and everything’s going to be okay and real life really does have happy endings. It is a rush of pure joy and childish happiness. Like her birthday and every holiday in Remnant all at the same time, as though the final piece of her happily-ever-after has just fallen into place, because right here, right now, embracing her precious Crescent Rose at the school of her dreams, Ruby Rose is in her own heaven and not even the memories of that disastrous night and the masked jerk who stole away her beloved weapon can bring her down.

 “Why do you people keep hugging me?”

The realization she has just wrapped herself around a boy she just met on the other hand-

“Ah-!”

Her face goes beet red. She separates from him in a gust of rose petals, grabbing the compact scythe and hiding behind Yang.

“Heh, sorry…” Ruby apologizes with a sheepish chuckle, hugging Crescent Rose to her chest. She turns to the spot next to her, only to find it empty with its previous occupant already making her way to the door.

“Hey, Weiss!”

Still riding the high of having her Crescent Rose returned to her, Ruby rushes to the still-angry Schnee’s side in a flurry of rose petals, appearing in front of her and putting on an apologetic expression.

“What do you want?” Weiss sneers.

“Look, I- um…” Ruby shrinks only slightly under the glare. Even so, she digs in her metaphorical heels and looks the angry girl straight in the eyes. “I just wanted to say I’m really, really sorry about earlier.”

Weiss holds her glare for another moment. Then, she sighs.

“Well, at least that’s one of you,” she grumbles with an annoyed glance back.

 _‘Success!’_ Ruby cheers in her mind. The grouchy heiress may not have accepted the apology but at least she didn’t reject it either.

“One of us what?” Naruto asks as he makes his way over with a visible limp, Yang following just behind him.

“Has some semblance of manners!” Weiss snaps at him.

“Sheesh, e.p.f., you ever hear of something called an ‘inside voice’?” he rubs his ear with a wince. “You know, you’ve got some pretty big lungs for someone so small.”

“Do _not_ call me that!”

“E.p.f.? Or small?”

“ _Both!!!_ ”

“Hai, hai~, whatever you say, scar-face.”

“Not that either!”

“Frills?”

“No!”

“Washboard?”

_“Ab-so-lute-ly NOT!!!”_

Ruby glances between the two with worry. While it’s great Weiss no longer seems to be angry at her, what’s not great is that instead of being gone, the anger appears to have just switched targets, Naruto’s own flippant attitude not helping in the slightest. She actually looks maybe one or two stupid nicknames away from physically assaulting him.

“Hm…” Naruto rubs a hand against his cheek, his expression squinted in a lazy manner. “How about-“

Weiss grabs his collar, yanking him close enough to stare him straight in his only opened eye.

“My name,” she seethes, her eyes chilling pits of barely suppressed rage. “Is Weiss Schnee! Weiss! Schnee! Not e.p.f., not scar-face, not frills and _not washboard_! I am the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company and I will not be belittled in such a manner!”

“Weiss Schnee,” she hisses, her voice trembling. “Say my name. _Say. It._ ”

“Waissu Sneeze.”

“H-hey, you guys don’t need to fight, right? I’m sure we-ah!”

It is important to note three things result in the following sequence of events.

While Weiss Schnee is a perfectly capable, young huntress-in-training, her choice of footwear does not offer her the greatest of support. It is true, that with grace and elegance, the Schnee heiress has mastered the art of fighting in heels, but only while needing to balance her own weight. Thus, with the added weight of another person, that balance has been broken, exposing her to the disadvantages of her footwear.

And while Naruto Uzumaki is more powerful than any young boy his age has any right to be, he is still a boy, and thus, male. Therefore, he too possesses the inherent weakness common to his gender. The likes of blades and bullets are but nuisances to him, yet even so, a straight punch to the balls backed by the superhuman strength of one Yang Xaio Long is something even he has trouble shaking off. Thus, having recently taken one such punch, he is still beset by a sense of nausea and weakness in the legs.

And while Ruby Rose is as sweet and innocent as a young girl her age can be, she is prone to rare but often disastrous moments of stupidity.

Thus, the following sequence of events.

Ruby grabs at Naruto’s shoulders, trying to separate the two white-haired teens. The sudden motion causes Naruto to tip back, his weight pushing against Ruby.

Having expected more resistance, Ruby begins to tip over, but is able to catch herself, pushing back against Naruto, pushing his weight back onto Weiss.

The sudden release and addition of the taller Naruto’s weight, in addition to Ruby’s push, causes Weiss to lose her balance, Weiss unintentionally pulling on Naruto’s collar to try to stop her fall. The weakness in his legs causes him to go down with her. He only manages to move one of his arms into position, their faces smashing together as they both go down.

Ruby stares in horror.

Did… did she just…

“Ohhh…” Ruby whimpers. She can already hear the yelling.

“Whelp, that’s one way to stop them from fighting!” Yang says with a grin, putting an arm around her little sister. “But, you know, I’m not sure if getting them to ‘kiss and make up’ was really the best way to go about it.”

Then, she tilts her head. “Ah, never mind. Looks like whisker’s got ‘em covered.”

“Mmm mmm mm mm, mmm mmm mmm! _”_

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting off, calm your tits.”

“ _Mmm! Mmm mmm-!_ ”

“Oh, wait, you don’t have any. My bad.”

 **“MMMMMMM!!!** ”

Naruto rolls off Weiss, removing his hand from over her mouth. She scrambles to her feet, wiping her lips off on her sleeve.

“Ugh, I cannot believe you put your filthy fingers on my lips!”

“Better than the alternative,” Naruto grimaces, shaking his hand. “Geez, your lips are as cold as your hands.”

“They are not!”

“They’re like ice packs.”

“Ugh! I cannot believe you! You should be thanking me for waking you up earlier!”

“I’d be more thankful if you didn’t do it by putting those little ice packs of yours on my face.”

Ruby blinks.

A faint blush makes its way over her cheeks and Weiss crosses her arms, turning away. “I w-will admit that it was improper of me, but you shouldn’t have been asleep there in the first place!”

“Doesn’t make what you did any less perverted.”

“Perverted?!”

“Hey, so for the rest of us in the crowd wondering,” Yang cuts in, raising a hand. “Does that mean you two kissed already or is this all just a big misunderstanding?”

“Earlier, while I was sleeping, she-“

Weiss dives at him, slapping a hand over his mouth.

“Not. A. Word.” She hisses.

Naruto points to her hand with an annoyed glare.

“If you shut up, I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Wow, going straight from first base to a home run, eh?”

Weiss turns to shoot Yang a glare. Ruby gives her older sister a questioning look to go along with it.

“Wait, first base? Home run? How’d we go from kissing to baseball?”

There is a moment as all of those present pause to stare at the silver-eyed girl. Then, Naruto pokes the hand over his mouth again, makes a zipping motion and signals ‘ok’.

“Good.” Weiss declares with a satisfied nod, removing her hand from his mouth. “Now keep your mouth shut and follow me.”

Naruto shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs without a word.

“Come on, whiskers. You really ditching us for the ice queen?” Yang asks half-jokingly.

He pats his stomach and shrugs again, as if to say ‘no, I’m ditching you for free food’.

“And you-.”

Ruby gulps when Weiss turns to her next. But she does not yell or scream. Instead, she only glares, pressing her lips into a flat line.

“Do us both a favor and stay as far away from me as possible.”

Ruby winces, her gaze dropping to the floor.

“I-I’m sorry…”

Her apology goes unheard over the clacking of heels as the heiress walks away. It is like waking up to a splash of cold water. A reminder that even with her precious weapon returned to her, outside of a fight, she’s still just an awkward, little girl who doesn’t even know what she’s doing. And even in a fight…

A sigh escapes her lips, her shoulders drop and she hugs Crescent Rose tighter to her chest, hugging the compact sniper-scythe as though to push away the memories of just how she lost it in the first place.

A hand pats her on the shoulder.

Ruby looks up to find Naruto, his expression blank. Unreadable.

Great, she mentally berates herself. Probably made him angry too.

He pulls out his scroll, swipes to open a picture and flips it around to show them. On the screen is a crude, but easily identifiable rendition of the Schnee Heiress in light blue, complete with scar and angry expression. An arrow with the word ‘big’ points to her head.

An arrow with the word ‘small’ points at her chest.

That gets a tiny chuckle out of her. A small smile tugs at Ruby’s lips.

Another hand grips her shoulder, this one belonging to her sister.

“So I get the first one’s supposed to be ‘big head’.” Yang grins. “But is the second supposed to be her heart or her boobs.”

Naruto only smirks, this time patting her on the arm. He gives them a lazy wave and leaves to follow after Weiss. They both return the goodbye and Ruby feels a squeeze on her shoulder.

“Come on, forget about the ice queen,” Yang says with a warm smile. “Let’s go have a look around.”

…  


* * *

  
Of Heroes and Monsters

Welcome to Beacon(III)

Chapter 8: mask

* * *

She watches as he devours what she can only assume to be his ninth bowl of ramen, an estimate that may very well be entirely too generous considering the small mountain of empty dishware at his side.

How horrifying.

If nothing else, at least his stuffing of his face has prevented him from spewing out whatever unintelligible thoughts happen to be passing through that filthy mind of his.

In truth, there are two reasons she offered to pay for his food. First, as thanks. While she may not have approved of his method of doing so, she is thankful he blocked them from kissing. Of course, duty comes before romance. Becoming a huntress, redeeming her family name, finding _him_ , all of it comes before any schoolgirl thoughts of love. Even so, she’d rather her first kiss to be something meaningful instead of the result of a spur of the moment accident.

And second is to investigate the mysterious faunus. To solve the puzzle of this niggling sense of familiarity that itches at the back of her mind whenever she looks at him.

He is not particularly unattractive or unsightly. His eyes… eye… is striking. A perfect shade of baby blue marred only by the slight bags beneath his eyes and just about everything else about him. His scar is a curious mirror of her own, the eye closed simply as if there is no reason to keep it open. It had escaped her notice in the brief encounter from earlier in the day, but here, sitting only a table’s breadth across from him, the line of discolored skin is all too clear to see. Still, the scar evokes only an odd sense of comradery, almost like seeing someone else wearing the same shirt.

… It must be the whiskers.

Perhaps the child of a mine worker? Or maybe the spawn of one of those vile White Fang. Even know, years after the fact, she is certain she would not have forgotten the presence of such conspicuous markings on any of their faces.

An invisible sigh escapes her lips. This is getting her nowhere.

All that’s left is to ask him and see if he can provide some answers himself.

“So… um…”

It is at that moment it dawns on Weiss Schnee that for all her indignation over his refusal to use her name, she does not even know his.

“I’m Naruto, in case you were wondering,” he pauses in his devastation of the noodles to answer her with an unconcerned air. He perks a brow.  “Am I allowed to talk now?”

“Y-yes,” she takes a sip of her water, silently cursing herself for the slight blush of embarrassment that makes its way over her cheeks. Had she really been that obviously staring at him?

“You know, I’m surprised,” he admits, slurping up another mouthful of noodles. “I figured you’d have corrected the yellow one when she asked if we kissed. Though, I guess in some ways being see as a pervert isn’t quite as bad as being seen as a creepo who goes up to people and touches their face while they’re sleeping. I don’t have to pretend to be your boyfriend now or anything do I?”

“Oh yes, we would just make the perfect pair, wouldn’t we?” she sneers. “Me, the heiress of the largest producer of Dust in the world and you, some scruffy looking faunus who likes to peek up girl’s skirts.”

“I deny that statement.” He responds with a nonplussed expression. “People are responsible for the consequences and results of their actions. Nothing can be gained without loss. You choose to wear a skirt, and as such, the price you pay for such freedom is the risk of such scrutiny.”

“… What?”

“I didn’t peek. You flashed me. I refuse to be labeled a pervert by someone who goes up to people and does this and that to them while they’re sleeping.”

“C-can you not make it sound so perverse?” she scowls, the blush spreading as she becomes all too aware of the glances and looks of the other patrons of the noodle shop. “Besides, you were having a nightmare.”

“I am well aware,” he drawls. “Thanks, I guess. But couldn’t you have just tapped me on the shoulder or something?”

Her blush grows again. She takes another sip of water to cool her head.

“Well, whatever,” he returns his attention to his food, finishing his current bowl of noodles. “Pretty much everyone was already gone and I don’t think those two are the type to spread rumors… so, you have something to ask me? You’ve been staring for a pretty long time now.”

“Gurk-!”

The water goes down the wrong pipe. She hacks and coughs, holding a hand over her mouth. The waiter brings another bowl of noodles and hands her some napkins.

“T-thank you...” Weiss says as she wipes her lips.

It is as though faced with the white-haired faunus’s accusations, she has been made acutely aware of her own actions. And as justified as it may have been for his unforgivable comments on her bust size, even she is unable to argue in defense of her own behavior at the headmaster’s speech, let alone their first encounter.

“S-so, Naruto…” she begins. Be casual, Weiss Schnee tells herself. The faunus himself doesn’t look like he is holding a grudge, so there is no reason for her to be so apprehensive. She is paying for his food, isn’t she? So, if nothing else, he should be willing to hear her out. “What do your parents do for a living…?”

“Kind of hard to do something for a living when you’re dead.”

“O-oh… what _did_ they do?”

“Dunno. Never met em.”

“Any older brothers or sisters…?”

“Nope.”

“Relatives?”

“Not that I know of.”

This isn’t even fair. It’s like walking through a minefield. And while him being an orphan does go a long way to explain his lack of manners, it just makes _her_ feel that much worse that she is the one bringing something like that up, especially considering how the world views her and her family thanks to the actions of her father.

“Also, by the way? Not a faunus.”

“Gurk-!”

This time, it is the air that goes down the wrong pipe.

“Yeah, these things are birthmarks,” he explains, slurping up another mouthful of noodles. “Though, I guess you’d already know that.”

Weiss takes another sip of water to compose herself, to hide the slight flush of embarrassment.

She almost prefers when he was just flat out insulting her.

“Well, it’s not like everyone doesn’t already know all of that stuff about your family, so I guess we can just call it even… ah, wait. How’d you get that scar?”

It is the first sign of interest he has shown in anything other than the food. Still, she can’t help but scowl at the reminder. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“Something, something, guilt tripping you about asking about my dead parents.”

“You are shameless.”

“I mean, I can pretend to be all offended and angry if you want.”

It is almost refreshing in a way, this demolition style of brutal honesty. Weiss stares into his single eye for another moment before she sighs and shakes her head. There is no harm in telling him. Regardless of how annoying he has been, it can’t be pleasant to have someone you barely even know asking about your literally non-existent family. If only to make it up to him, she ought to answer the question.

A sigh. Weiss purses her lips. Folds her arms, crosses her legs and resists the urge to scowl.

 “Father… didn’t want me to come to Beacon.” Weiss begins to explain. She pauses. Hesitates, half expecting for him to say something to interrupt or insult her.

Instead, she finds the white-haired boy having stopped stuffing his face for the first time since they got here. His lone eye stares at her with a thinly veiled curiosity past the blank mask of laziness.

The interest is a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Pushing past her unease, she continues.

“He wanted me to stay in Solitas, where it was ‘safe’. Still, I managed to convince him to allow me to attend Beacon if I passed a test. That test was fighting an Arma Gigas. Obviously, I was able to defeat it. But during the fight, it managed to catch me off guard and…”

She trails off. Brings up a hand to trace the stretch of discolored skin over her left eye. “ _This_ is a reminder. Of what it took for me to get here… and of what I have to give up if I go back.”

“An Arma Gigas, huh…?” he perks a brow, leaning back as he takes a sip of water. “You beat a Gigas by yourself? That’s pretty impressive.”

“Hmph. Of course.” Weiss says with a haughty smile. She brings a hand to her chest. “I _am_ a Schnee after all.

“Mm. Can you summon it?”

“… Excuse me?”

“Your semblance is Glyph, isn’t it?” he asks. “I heard it was one of the few hereditary semblances in the Kingdoms. A system-based semblance that even lets you call upon the forms of any grimm you’ve killed in the past. So, if you beat that Arma Gigas, can you summon it?”

“… No I can’t,” she admits, a slight twitch in her eye. “You seem to know quite a bit about the Schnee family semblance…”

‘Perhaps you’ve encountered it before’, is the question that goes unsaid. It goes unanswered as well when the white-haired boy only shrugs and returns his attention to the last of the noodles in his current bowl. The already shaky smile falls from her lips and Weiss directs a wordless glare at her current dinner partner as the waiter delivers another bowl of noodles.

“What about you?”

“Hm?” Naruto makes a noise, already in the process of slurping up another mouthful of noodles.

“Where did you get _your_ scar?”

He takes a moment to finish slurping up the noodles. Chews. Swallows. And in a single breath, he says-

“Well~, one day while I was visiting a fr- _acquaintance_ in a cave this pumpkin guy came up to me and asked if I could help him baby sit some kids and I was like sure so we all went camping but then the kids were attacked by a wolf! But I don’t mean like a big, bad wolf, I mean like a cute, little, baby wolf but it was still knocking them around so I stepped in and I got my eye cut out and then this old hag came out of nowhere and tried to eat me but I managed to get away and then I ran into Ozpin in a bar and he bought me some ramen and asked me if I wanted to come to Beacon.”

For a moment, Weiss stares. Blinks. Furrows her brow. Blinks again, her brain trying and failing to process the whiskered boy’s story.

“… What. That… What? That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“Yeah, I honestly have no idea how I ended up here either.”

For a moment, Weiss stares at the white-haired boy, wondering if it is actually possible to lose brain cells just from listening to something so inconceivably stupid. She squeezes her eyes shut and rubs her forehead.

Then it dawns on her, the very last part of his seemingly nonsensical story.

“Wait,” her eyes snap open and she slaps her hands on the table, leveling an incredulous stare at him. “You said Ozpin, as in Professor Ozpin himself, personally invited you to come to Beacon?”

“Bought me a bowl of ramen, too.” Naruto replies, as if that detail is just as important as the others.

“Why would Professor Ozpin go out of his way to _personally_ invite you to Beacon?”

The question is asked in two parts curiosity and one-part jealousy. Even she, the heiress of the leading dust producer in the world, had to send in a formal application after passing her father’s own ‘test’. For Professor Ozpin to invite the boy himself…

“To be honest, that’s what I’d like to know,” Naruto admits, a far-off look in his eye. He glances at her. Looks away. His lips wrinkle into the beginnings of a scowl before he catches himself, his expression returning to a mask of lazy indifference.

“But… I have a few ideas.”

None of them good and none he is willing to share, if the way he returns to his noodles and half-heartedly picks at them is any indication. Maybe he has eaten his fill, finally having finished trying to eat a hole through her wallet. Or, more than likely, something has just spoiled his appetite.

The memory of their first meeting drifts to the forefront of her mind. Her attention is drawn to the bags under his eyes.

“Why did you want to come to Beacon?”

Without looking up from his bowl, he asks her the very question she herself was about to ask him. His single blue eye glances up at her. “You said your old man didn’t want you coming here, right? Well, why Beacon? After everything that happened three years ago…”

The last part is said in an almost robotic tone, as though he had very carefully scrubbed any sort of emotion from his voice. No condemnation or sympathy, no comfort or derision. It is the tone of someone walking on eggshells. Of someone trying not to offend with something they know would be found offensive.

_“Why don’t you stay home? Where it is safe?”_

Her temper flares like a match thrown into a vat of oil.

“The only thing that incident proved is that my ‘home’ is anything but _safe_.” Weiss spits the last word out like a curse. “That isn’t why my father wants me to stay in Atlas. All he cares about is keeping me where he can control me, where he can mold me into his perfect, little heiress. My ‘safety’ is the farthest thing from his mind.”

She regrets the words almost as soon as she says them. In her mind, she silently curses herself for letting her anger get the better of her.

After all, here she is complaining about her father to someone who has never even met theirs, someone who, from what she has gleamed from their conversation, has never had anything resembling family. She can only imagine how pompous and self-absorbed she must look right now.

The anger drains out of her in a sigh. “I’m so-“

“Hey, you want the rest of this?”

He interrupts her, nudging the barely touched bowl of noodles towards her. Weiss blinks, unsure just how to interpret the gesture. The only reason they came here is because of his insistence that they go somewhere with ramen. In truth, she planned to go somewhere else to have dinner by herself after paying for his food, but it would be a lie to say the aroma of the shop isn’t making her the least bit hungry.

“Um… I’m not eating, so-“

“What?” his lips twitch into the beginnings of a smirk. “Can’t use chopsticks either?”

“Ugh, of course I can!” Weiss snaps, taking her pair of chopsticks and breaking them, only fumbling them a little before she fits them to her hand.

“So, I’m not exactly the foremost expert on dads, considering I don’t even know who mine is…”

Naruto flicks the side of the bowl and it slides across the table like a piece of ice over glass. He taps the table with a finger and the bowl comes to a stop just in front of her. “But, the general consensus seems to be that your dad’s a massive dick. So it doesn’t look like I’m all that far off.”

“Oh, I am well aware,” Weiss scoffs. She curls her lips at the bowl of noodles. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not have your left overs-.”

She tries to do the very same as he did, lightly pushing the side of the bowl to send it back over to him. Instead, the bowl slides all of an inch before it stops.

“Pft-”

A choked laugh. Weiss glares at Naruto, glares at the bowl of noodles and narrows her eyes. A trail of pure white glyphs appears under the bowl, over the surface of the table and she gives it another dainty nudge.

Again, it moves about an inch before it stops.

Naruto smirks as he waves the waiter over. “Hey old man, could I get another bowl over here?”

“Sorry kid, you ate it all! That’s the last one!”

The smirk vanishes like dust to the wind. He turns back to her.

“I change my mind, I want that back.”

In response, Weiss perks a brow. Without ever breaking eye contact, she pushes her bangs back, takes the chopsticks and brings a tangle of noodles to her lips.

Firm but not too firm, with just the right amount of flavor. While it may not be her usual fare, she will admit the noodles are quite good. Even if they are somewhat cheap. Still, the taste of the noodles pales in comparison to the sheer satisfaction she feels from seeing the disgruntled look on his face as he watches her eat the last bowl.

“Well, that’s your dad, but what about your mom?” he asks. “You’ve got a brother and a sister too, right? What about them?”

“My mother is a drunk who would rather spend an afternoon at the bottom of a bottle of wine than spend it with her children, my younger brother hates me and not wanting me to attend Beacon, for whatever reason, seemed to be one of the _very_ few things my older sister and my father actually agreed on.”

It is childish yes, and there is a part of her that questions if it is appropriate to share all of this with a complete stranger, but she still can’t help but feel a tinge of triumph at the gob smacked look on his face.

“Families are hard, huh…?” Naruto muses, glancing away and scratching his cheek. He turns his gaze back to her. “Yeah, you know I have a godfather? I don’t really know if it counts, but apparently my parents named me after the main character in the first book he ever wrote.”

“Oh.” Weiss perks a brow. It isn’t a blood relation so it isn’t quite what she is looking for, but it is something for starters. “That’s nice.”

“It’d be nicer if he hadn’t forgot about the whole ‘godfather’ thing for a good thirteen years.”

“My god,” she blanches. “Thirteen years?! What was he doing that whole time?”

“Drinking. Perving. Just generally not being around when I actually needed him.” He scoffs, taking a drink of water. “I fucking hate the guy.”

Naruto seems to realize something. He winces slightly, the anger draining out of his expression. “Sorry, I wasn’t really trying to one-up you or anything. It’s just… I think I get where you’re coming from. Sort of.”

Weiss perks a brow. Raises her cup with a dry expression. “To our mutually absent, alcoholic guardians?”

A scoff. “I’d say ‘guardians’ is far too generous, but sure.”

He meets her toast, their cheap, plastic cups tapping together.

“Hey, explain something to me,” Naruto says after taking a sip of water.

“You were pretty big on the whole ‘I’m the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company and I will not be belittled in such a manner’!” he says, even mimicking her voice. “But it sounds like you’re not exactly fond of the idea of your dad handing the company down to you… so which is it?”

Again, he catches her off-guard. It’s like whenever she thinks he wasn’t paying attention, he waits until just the worst moment to prove her wrong. Bringing another length of noodles to her lips, Weiss regards the boy who Professor Ozpin personally invited to attend Beacon, those whisker marks of his looking less and less like a cat’s whiskers and more like the whiskers of a fox.

“It’s not-“ she pauses a moment to finish chewing, bringing a hand to her mouth. “Excuse me. The Schnee Dust Company _will_ be mine someday, but I refuse to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

“Uhhh, what?”

This time he returns a dumb stare. Weiss gives him a raised brow, unable to decide whether he really is that dumb, or if he’s just playing clueless to try and catch her off guard again.

“The name Schnee has a long and noble history, a history that has since entered a morally gray area ever since my father married into it,” she explains, the very thought bringing a sour taste to her mouth. “His legacy is a _stain_ on _my_ family’s good name.”

“Before, Schnee was a name loved and respected throughout Remnant. My grandfather’s company was a shining symbol of industry and prosperity. But ever since my father came into power…”

She scowls. “Well, you’ve heard the rumors.”

“So you basically want to redeem your family name…?” he muses, biting his chopsticks. “I guess I can understand that. You guys are basically the Gato Corp of the Kingdoms. Only difference is Papa Schnee doesn’t really have to worry about getting knifed in his sleep cause he pissed off one of the Shinobi Villages… but what I don’t understand is, if you hate your dad and what he’s turned the SDC into, why not throw it all away? That stain… in the end, no matter what you do, people aren’t so willing to forgive and forget. So why not renounce him and everything he’s done? Throw everything away so you can rebuild from the ground up.”

“My father was not the start of our name. I refuse to let him be the end of it.”

Naruto says nothing. He leans back. Taps his chopsticks against the table. That single blue eye of his looks away, a small, bitter smile making its way across his cheeks. “You know, I’m jealous… wanting to show the world that the actions of one, shitty person don’t define you… even if that person is your own father. That’s good. That’s as good a reason as any to be here.”

It is the first time she has seen him smile. It is a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. A familiar smile.

“Well, why are you here?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

Before she can ask him what he means, he tosses the chopsticks onto the table and downs the rest of his water. “Well, thanks for the food. I’ve got some prep to do for tomorrow, so if you don’t need anything else, I’ll be taking my leave.”

His fingers form into the very same seal from their first encounter.

“Wait!”

Her voice leaps, almost unbidden from her throat. To her surprise, he does not vanish, instead giving her a raised brow.

“Um…” She didn’t expect to actually have been able to stop him. A part of her wishes she hadn’t, wishing she had kept to herself, especially after her disastrous attempt to ask about his family. But now, all there is to do is spit it out and hope she doesn’t accidently stumble upon yet another metaphorical landmine.

“Have we… met before? I mean, before today…”

He says nothing, continuing to stare at her with that striking blue eye of his. Then, he scratches the whisker marks on his cheeks.

“The only person I know of with a scar like that is a guy who reads porn all the time.”

A pause. His gaze drop to her breasts.

“… Sorry, I’m not good with girly guys and boyish girls. You’re not actually a dude in a dress, are you?”

She throws the soy sauce bottle at his face.

He catches the bottle with a smirk, setting it back on the table and vanishing into a swirl of golden embers.

That-! That-! That _perverted mongrel_!

Weiss growls, glaring at the empty chair as though she might be able to summon back its previous occupant so she can exact her righteous vengeance. Alas, the pervert does not return, leaving her only able to stew in her anger.

That mongrel. That vile, unthankful, _perverted, brainless, sloppy-looking, boob-obsessed_ _mongrel!_ Faunus or not, there is no other word in her mind she could possibly use to describe that _creature_. The absolute nerve! After she even payed for his food, how dare he comment on her admittedly modest breast size?!

Sure, she may not have the same figure as her older sister… or the aptly named ‘tit monster’ from earlier… or even the dolt who tripped over her luggage…

Ugh.

If nothing else, at least she’s found an answer to her question.

There is no way they could have possibly met before.

Because there is _no way_ she would _ever_ forget someone so _unbelievably annoying._  
  


* * *

  
**AN: And we are beginning to pull into the stations of canon. I tried to give it my own spin on things, but there is some stuff I needed to happen so I kind of had to go through it. That’s also part of the reason this chapter is a bit longer. I was thinking of splitting it in half, but I’d rather not have an entire chapter just be ‘basically canon but Naruto is there’.**

 

**Author's Note:**

> First time posting on AO3 so I'm really sorry if the tags aren't helpful. If anyone would be willing to message me to figure out what tags I should be adding, I'd really appreciate it.


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